Chapter 97: Attack Luo

Sun Fugui took Guan Peizhong back and asked the soldiers to throw some firewood into the fire, and then the hundreds of people raised the fire, left the brigade deep and shallow, and fled back to Luofu.

Guan Shengyun stayed on the official road. At the beginning, the Breaking Sky Battalion drove straight past the descended guard of the guards, Guan Shengyun also wanted to put some more pressure on the large group of routs in front, but he didn't go far, and the physical strength of the soldiers couldn't keep up, and many people began to stumble under their feet, although they were also marching with fire, there were still people falling down from time to time. Next to the official road is a mountain wall on one side and a valley on the other, Guan Shengyun pondered for a while, or if he saw that it was good, he would accept it, otherwise there would be no way to escape from the desperate rout soldiers who blew up the nest and rushed back in reverse, and the Xiaoxiao camp couldn't bear it, so he ordered to camp on the spot. However, when they set out in the afternoon, everyone brought dry food and water hyacinth, and their morale was not ordinarily high, and it was not the same as the defeated soldiers who were lying on the road not far in front of them. The soldiers did not remove their armor, leaned on each other for the night, and the whole team set off again as soon as the light began to shine.

After half a day and half a night's tossing, especially when there was no food in their stomachs, although the defeated soldiers also rested for most of the night, their spirits became more numb, those wearing armor had already lost their armor, and their weapons were also thrown to the ground. The captives completely lost the will to resist, Guan Shengyun simply dismantled the Xiaoxiao camp, and each infantry team carried hundreds of prisoners all the way to Luofu. The armor and banners discarded by the defeated soldiers on the official road were piled up on the side of the road, and no one paid attention to them. Just after the hour (seven o'clock in the morning), everyone walked out of the canyon and saw the towering city wall of Luoyang City a few miles away.

At this time, the wooden planks on the official road outside Luoyang City have been removed by Qi Xiaoguang and others, and as far as the eye can see, there are ravines all over the city in front of the city. Guan Shengyun looked at it for a while, and couldn't help laughing: It seems that Luoyang Mansion is fully prepared, in this case, without four or five days of effort, the road will not be filled. Right in the middle - this is also what the military advisor conveyed: fake play, it's best to really sing it and do enough kung fu. So the order went down: the horse team was divided into two to hold the north and south ends, and each team was optimistic about the prisoners, and rested on the spot.

Before the end of the hour (less than 11 o'clock in the morning), there was a commotion on the official road behind him, and a large group of people drove up. In addition to Gu Baihua's Gangfeng Battalion, Gong Derun's Zhenyong Battalion, and more than 1,000 auxiliary soldiers in the Guoqing Forest Belt, there are more than 3,000 Xin'an people. Luo Yonghao left Zhang Ding's Thunderbolt battalion and wounded soldiers in Xin'an to rest, and the others were all sent to Guan Shengyun. Not only that, Luo Junshi also transported 100 fat pigs to let the victorious brothers satisfy their hunger.

This is a big battle. As the saying goes, when there are 10,000 people, there is no boundary. In order to exert as much pressure as possible on Luoyang, so as to conceal the strategic intention of going south more deeply, Guan and Luo are of course how lively they come.

The most urgent thing is, of course, the opening of the meal, and the smoke of the cooking is rising. The soldiers of the Breaking Sky Battalion and the Gangfeng Battalion unloaded their armor and sat down comfortably, drinking the hot broth beautifully, and watching the auxiliaries set up camp while nibbling on the soft freshly baked flatbread. The official road outside the city is already a mess, so there is no need to worry about the counterattack of the official army, so as long as the tent is erected, there is no need to build camp walls and trenches.

The auxiliaries were not badly fed. The more than 1,000 people brought by the captain of the country are the backbone of the auxiliary soldiers, and the total number is also limited, so there is no need to cook two meals, and the soldiers can eat whatever the auxiliary soldiers eat.

The people of Xin'an are a little miserable: wild vegetable soup with multigrain cakes, meat is not to be considered. However, except for the possibility of being whipped when working as a child, this diet is still better than on weekdays, which is not guaranteed to have dry food for a meal.

The most unfortunate were the rout captives in Luo. The old rule of this era was that the captives had no food to eat for the first day - not only did they have no food, they didn't even have water! I have to do the hardest and most tiring work, otherwise there is a high probability that I will be beaten to death, and I will be killed with a knife as a negative teaching material. This is true on the first day, and it is likely that there will be no food on the second day. It's normal, I'm afraid you'll be full of rebellion and trouble. This is self-explanatory common sense, and the captives know it, so they work very hard and hard.

The armor, banners, weapons, and tools that the defeated soldiers had abandoned on the official road earlier were all picked up by the auxiliaries. The construction of camps, the cutting of trees, the leveling of roads and other things were all under the command of special personnel, the total number of people and prisoners was six or seven thousand, some were laborers, and the auxiliaries did not need to work, Guo Qinglin issued a knife to each of them, and let them serve as overseers in a majestic manner. The captain himself led dozens of people to search the captives and then sorted and seized: iron armor, leather armor and weapons had to be counted and collected separately, these treasures were not easy to make, they had to be kept separately, shovels, shovels, pickaxes and saws and other tools were counted and distributed to the people and prisoners to work. In order to expand the momentum, Luo Yonghao sent a lot of flags, which were planted all over the mountains by Guan Shengyun.

To the surprise of the captives, early the next morning, everyone received their meal, although it was a wild vegetable soup boiled in salted water with two stiff mixed noodles, but everyone ate it with relish and thanked Dade: no one will waste food in the stomachs of mortal people! It seems that his little life has been saved. When Guan Shengyun came over to inspect accompanied by several generals, the captives knelt down one after another and expressed their heartfelt gratitude.

Guan Shengyun has his own little abacus: these thousands of captives are all treasures. Needless to say, the hundreds of palace guards are first-class elites, even the Luofu soldiers and Ding Zhuang brought by Qi Xiaoguang are all very good soldiers. The Thunderbolt Battalion and the Zhenyong Battalion, which were responsible for feints to lure the enemy, suffered a lot of losses, and they were just used to replenish them. As for whether there will be any trouble, Guan Shengyun is not very worried: in this era, eating food and being a soldier is a means of making a living, except for the family guards who have been firmly bound to a certain chain of allegiance, for the vast majority of ordinary soldiers, cutting everyone is eating and robbing everyone is making a fortune, there is no difference. Moreover, they were scattered and organized into different teams, and there was a large army in the town, and they couldn't make a fuss, and it wouldn't be long before they would die to the ground. There was another thing that made Guan Shengyun feel a lot of feelings, a small thing: the people who came from Xin'an each brought a few wooden bowls.

The standard ration for field operations stipulated by the Ming Military Department was soup with cakes. Cut the white cloth into strips in advance, soak it in shochu, salted water and vinegar sauce, soak it in the sun and soak it many times, and each person takes a roll with him when he leaves. The dry food is shochu, sesame oil, salt water and steamed bread, there are rice cakes and flour cakes, and I carry them in my arms. When eating, cut off a strip of cloth and boil it in water, and take out the cake to dip it in. Of course, this is a last resort on the battlefield to make an emergency, these things are not allowed to be eaten on weekdays, every night when the camp officers have to check, stealing food to beat the baton. Under normal circumstances, when conditions permit, it is still done by the soldiers of each team. As for food, it is best to eat what you grab and eat "because of the food". Because transportation is a big problem, and it can even be said that it is the biggest problem in the army's operations: without the guarantee of modern transportation conditions, the wear and tear on the road is too great. Taking the transportation of grain for thousands of miles as an example, the transport team itself also has to eat, not only on the way to eat, but also on the way back! Twenty truckloads of grain were transported, and only one cart could often be unloaded when they arrived at the front. Even if the enemy marches on the territory and the captured soldiers only manage the one-way grain, and all the food they are transported to the place and left to fend for themselves, the efficiency is not one in ten.

Whether it's vegetable soup, broth, or boiled cloth strips, there must always be a bowl to serve it. Guan Shengyun's headquarters and the defeated soldiers of Luofu all ran down directly from the battlefield, whether they were pursuing or fleeing, it was impossible for everyone to carry a bowl in their arms - this was thought of by Luo Yonghao! The devil is hidden in the details, and before Napoleon invented the staff system of the modern army, the so-called famous generals were often the ones who thought all the details to the fullest.

The next step is screening, first separating the palace guards, Luofu soldiers and Ding Zhuang. Ding Zhuang is the simplest, and they are all handed over to Guoqing Lin as an auxiliary soldier first, and then slowly challenge the soldiers from the inside. The other two groups of people separated the officers from the ordinary soldiers, and the officers and the small leaders were put under centralized supervision, which was difficult to raise anyway, and let them do the most dangerous, hard, and tiring work, and pull them down with death. The rest of the soldiers were scattered and organized into different auxiliaries. It sounds like a lot of work, and someone might lie or something. But in fact, it is not troublesome, just point at it with a knife and ask it one by one: those who answer truthfully go to fill in the ditch, cut down the head of the pocket that is half full and talk nonsense twice a day, and the person who points to it is put into the barracks on the spot to drink broth and rest, and no longer have to do coolies. Simple and efficient.

At the head of Luoyang City, Qi Xiaoguang looked worriedly at the crowd outside the city who were busy preparing for the siege. According to the Tang newspaper, reinforcements from various provinces in Henan Province have arrived in the vicinity one after another, but they have all stopped dozens of miles away. In the three prefectures of northern Henan, the reinforcements of Zhangde, Weihui and Huaiqing were stationed in Mengjin sixty miles away, the reinforcements sent by the provincial capital Kaifeng were stationed in Yanshi and Nanlu eighty miles away, and the reinforcements on the South Road seemed to be the closest, stationed in Longmen Pass, only about twenty miles. However, Qi Xiaoguang knew in his heart that even if the three roads were opened at the same time now, they might be the ones who arrived in the end: there is a wide Luoshui between Longmen and Luofu, and it is normal to ferry back and forth by small boats that can't carry a few people, no more, two or three thousand people plus baggage, it is normal to spend three or more days!

Qi Zhifu's heart was like a mirror: At this moment, it is difficult to count on these reinforcements. If the Shouwang Protector and the Luofu Headquarters beat the thieves to the ground and fled in Hangu Pass, in order to rob the military merits, and in order to wash the villages, towns and counties along the way to make a fortune, none of the guest troops who came to help would want to fall behind others, and they should be brave. But at the moment, whoever is the first to run recklessly will not have good fruit to eat, and it is reasonable for everyone to find various reasons to wait and see. It was the practice of the Ming Dynasty that the army was not allowed to enter the city unless it was absolutely necessary, especially the guest army who did not have any incense to talk about. has no chance to get rich, but may run headlong into the main force of the thief and lose his old capital? Sun Fugui won't do this kind of thing. In Daming, if you don't work hard, you can help you cheer and be brave and don't harm you much, and you are already worthy of the honor of being a model of the guest army. Therefore, the defense of Luofu still has to rely on itself - however, most of the elites who can fight in Luofu are now outside the city to help the thieves fill in the trenches and prepare to attack the city, how can this be good?

Guan Shengyun's location is very advantageous: the south is Luoshui, Cijian is surging a lot after the Hangu Pass merges, there is no need to worry about the official army crossing the river sneak attack, the north is Gucheng Mountain, also called the hairpin Pavilion Mountain, the water originates here, winds south, joins Luoshui in the east of Luoyang City, barren mountains and wild mountains, it is difficult for the army to pass through (Mengjin of the Ming Dynasty, dozens of miles east of today's Mengjin County), behind it is Hangu Pass, therefore, it is only necessary to put on a vigorous attack posture to the west. In addition to filling in the trenches, of course, it was necessary to build siege equipment, but after all, it was only for appearance, so the work fell on a part of the people of Xin'an—the hard and dangerous work of logging was left to the captured officers and small leaders, and the people were responsible for making it. Of course, the people don't know how to crash cars and towers, but after a day or two, everyone gradually understands that these kings are only staring at the work under your hands, watching the bustle and busyness, and there are steamed buns to eat in the dark. As for whether the knot is strong or not, whether it will fall apart after a few steps, it seems that no one cares at all.

The main job of the captives was to fill in the road with other civilians, but instead of leveling the official road all the way to the city gate, they were busy opening a large field at the Hangu Pass, which seemed to be to establish a sizable forward base. The experienced veterans were talking in private: The kings are going to fight to the death with Luofu, how can they build a base so close to the city? Looking at this posture, I'm afraid I don't want to build a large fortress in the west of the city!

Every now and then, someone will pick someone, don't talk nonsense if you're chosen, just follow along. At first, everyone was still worried and scared, but after a while, the news gradually came back: the one who was picked away was lucky, and was taken to the Hangu official road in the west to build a road, and the work was much easier, and the food was much better, so they all competed for performance, hoping that they could also be picked. Everyone knows very well in their hearts that although it is safe now, after all, it is temporary, and when the base is built, when the road is filled in the direction of the city wall, it will definitely be attacked by the head of the city with all its might, and it will be a fatal errand! Fortunately, within a few days, most of the people were selected and taken away one after another, and almost all of them stayed in the nest at night.

In the beginning, tools such as shovels, shovels, pickaxes, etc., were taken away at night, and then handed out the next morning when work was started. Later, the kings seemed too lazy to bother anymore and stopped accepting it. Every day at dawn, there are fierce auxiliary soldiers to get up and go to work, there is a slow movement, the whole shack has to be beaten fat, and it didn't take long for everyone to develop a good habit of waking each other up and taking the initiative to start work.

The way of working here is similar to the usual routine of most people, getting up at about 5 o'clock in the morning and working until almost noon (11 o'clock) to go to the soldiers for dinner. After dinner, I can often take a nap for half an hour, and then continue to work, until the sun sets on the top of the West Mountain, and the day is over. In the first day or two, of course, there were overseers who carried whips back and forth, and the later they went, the fewer they went, and sometimes there was no one for a day.

On this day, the people went to work as usual, but they worked until the sun hung overhead, and the whistle for lunch was still not sounded. Finally, someone stopped what they were doing and ran to the soldiers to see that the camp was already empty, except for the people!