Wu Yuejun swore to go on the expedition, and the news reached Xuancheng, Li Congyi arranged the affairs of Xuanzhou Mansion, and then led the division to the guard battalion to Changzhou directly from the Xixin River through Yixing.

Li Congyi did not go through the moat water gate, but made all the soldiers wear civilian clothes and enter the city through the west gate. After settling down the guard camp, Li Congyi went to the Changzhou Military Capital Command Office to see Yu Wancheng. Historically, under the siege of tens of thousands of Wu and Yue troops, Yu Wancheng held Changzhou for nearly a year, and only went out of the city to surrender when the oil ran out.

However, generals like Yu Wancheng are limited by the lack of military knowledge in the world, so they are just decent and barely defend a city.

However, in Yu Wancheng's eyes, Jiang Guogong will only be more unbearable than himself. Therefore, in Yu Wancheng's plan, after Jiang Guogong came with Ning Guojun, Jiang Guogong could be the commander of the Changxuan and Liangzhou coalition forces, sit high in the Shuaifu, eat tea and drink.

For this reason, Yu Wancheng specially prepared a mansion for Jiang Guogong in Changzhou City, and specially prepared slaves and maids, even a few of the sad courtesans, and kept them so that Jiang Guogong was also at home in Changzhou, not bad Xuanzhou.

Yu Wancheng originally wanted to wait for Jiang Guogong to rest and come to visit again, but he didn't want Jiang Guogong to take a break for a moment, so he came directly to the door.

Yu Chengcheng naturally greeted him in person from the government office, and invited Li Congyi to sit on the head of the handsome hall to show that Jiang Guogong was the head.

"With Jiang Guogong bringing more than 10,000 Ningguo troops to help, then Changzhou will defend the city in a battle, and our army will definitely be able to win the battle." Yu Wancheng urged several times in the past few months, but Ning Guojun did not move, and Yu Wancheng thought that Jiang Guogong was in the end. However, Xuanzhou hurried and hurried, and by the beginning of November, 1,000 sets of iron armor were transported to Changzhou in batches, and the Changzhou army was supplemented with 1,000 crossbows and 100,000 fine iron crossbow arrows in the form of exchanging weapons for food. The armament level of the Changzhou army has been greatly improved.

Unexpectedly, as soon as the spies in Suzhou found out that the reinforcements of the Wu and Yue armies had arrived one after another, Jiang Guogong here entered Changzhou lightly before the arrival of the Ning Guojun army.

"I don't know how Lord Yu plans to deploy this battle, and how he plans to distribute the Ning Army?" Li Congyi and Yu Wancheng were polite, and then got to the point.

At that moment, Yu Wancheng asked his deputy commander Jiang Xiangming to explain the current deployment arrangements of the Changzhou army. The Changzhou army had 5,000 elites in Wuxi County on the Tang-Wu front, and 5,000 troops in the important town of Jiangyin, including 2,000 sailors. However, after the destruction of the Runzhou Navy Town, as the Jiangyin (*) Navy Division that cooperated with the town navy, it could only defend according to the village.

Yixing is facing Huzhou, the defensive pressure is not great, there were originally 3,000 soldiers and horses, after detecting that Wu Yue was still assembled in Suzhou, he took away 1,000, and now there are only 2,000 soldiers and horses left to defend the city. In addition, there are more than 2,000 people stationed in the Licheng Walled City along the Yangtze River, and there are 10,000 troops stationed in Changzhou. The Changzhou army claims to be 30,000, but it actually has more than 24,000 soldiers, and judging from the vacancy situation, it is indeed much better than the situation of the original Ningguo army.

"There are eight gates in Changzhou City, and after the Ning Guojun comes, it is planned to use more than 6,000 people of the Ning Guojun to guard the Beijing Gate (West Gate) and Qingshan Gate (North Gate)." Yu Wancheng said again. The west gate and the north gate were the most unlikely main attack directions of Wu Yue's army. Yu Wancheng didn't know what the real combat strength of the Ning Guojun was, but if he wanted to come to the guest army to fight, he would not have the same morale as the local defenders, and it would be inconvenient for the Jiang Guogong to use the Ning Guojun as cannon fodder. It is better to choose two city gates under pressure first, and look at the performance of Ning Guojun first. If the combat strength is not good, at least it can help the Changzhou army share the defensive pressure; If the combat strength is considerable, and when it is tight in other places, the Ningguo Army can become a strategic reserve for the whole army and join the key battlefield as a new force at a critical moment.

Wu Yuejun claimed to be 50,000, so he was counted as a real number; However, not all soldiers and horses can be piled up on the front line, and there must always be a deployment in the rear and along the line, so the real attack, even if it is 40,000 people, if the troops are divided to attack Jiangyin, then the final attack on Changzhou, there are more than 30,000 people left and right. However, the ratio of soldiers to one is more than three to one, which is enough to ensure that Changzhou is surrounded by water. But after Ning Guojun came, Yu Wancheng also had the confidence to occasionally go out of the city to fight a counterattack.

"There are about 12,000 people in the Ning Army, and the whole army is coming to help this time." Jiang Guogong's words were not very loud, but everyone in the Shuai Hall, including the commander of the left and right compartments of the Changzhou Army and the deputy commander of the right compartment, as well as several of Yu Wancheng's staff, could understand it, and they were all shocked. The number of people who came to the aid of the Ning State Army was so large that it only doubled the size of the Changzhou garrison. But there's still to come. "This duke is here, and the goal of this battle is not to defend the city, but to defeat Wu Yue's army. Therefore, the Ning Guojun will not participate in the defense of the city. ”

All of a sudden, a needle drop could be heard in the handsome hall.

"Lord Guogong, Wu Yuejun came to attack Changzhou, the number of soldiers should be between 30,000 and 40,000, if the Ning army came to help, our army is only more than 20,000 people, and Wu Yuejun knows that the Ning army is coming, I am afraid that it will also gather more than 40,000 troops. At that time, our army will still be half of the enemy's army, and it will be more than enough to defend the city, and it may not be easy to counterattack. One of Yu Wancheng's staff couldn't help but break the quiet atmosphere and reminded him loudly.

"Therefore, my father took the lead to discuss with you a foolproof plan to let Ning Guojun secretly enter the city, and at the same time, he also needs to keep as hidden as possible in the city, so as to ensure that after Ning Guojun enters the counteroffensive, he will give Wu Yuejun a big surprise."

It's completely different from what everyone thinks. Yu Wancheng and his generals and their staff looked at each other. Jiang Guogong's meaning is very clear, how to defend the city in the early stage, or the Changzhou army comes, and when the Changzhou army and Wu Yuejun are exhausted, Ning Guojun will strike a thunderous blow to Wu Yue's army and hit Wu Yue's army hard.

It's just that this idea is very beautiful, but it is not necessarily the operation.

"The Changzhou army only has more than 12,000 people, and it is difficult to achieve the effect of killing the Wu Yue army besieging the city by dividing the nearly twenty-four miles of city wall, and then create a suitable opportunity for the thunderous counterattack of the Ning Guo army." Jiang Xiangming, the deputy capital, was afraid that Jiang Guogong would be bragged and stupid by the generals of Ning Guojun, so he stated the difficulty to Jiang Guogong.

Li Congyi knows that if you don't give everyone confidence, it's useless to just sit here and talk about it. immediately stood up and invited the Changzhou military generals and Yu Wancheng's staff to go to the Guanning military camp level exercise. Yu Wancheng also wanted to see the appearance of Ning Guojun's army, so he happily went there immediately.

The guard battalion of the Ningguo Army Division is lined up in a battalion-level offensive formation, with three rows of pikemen in front and three rows of crossbowmen in the back to form an offensive front, and swords and shields on the left, right and rear sides to protect the formation. The spears used by these pikemen were more than a foot long, and they all wore iron armor. The sword and shield soldiers had wheelbarrows and two-wheeled vehicles converted into chariots, and the chariots were inserted with sharp spear tips to form the guard of the sword and shield soldiers.

At the beginning of the exercise, Ning Guojun attacked the front line, stepped on the drum and advanced in an orderly manner, advancing fifty steps, still like a straight line, advancing to a hundred steps, still like a straight line, and then another hundred steps, there were only 200 steps left from the straw dummy on the training ground, "Test firing!" Xu Le'an, the deputy battalion commander who organized the forward attack, gave an order, and several crossbowmen in the third row of crossbowmen fired.

Crossbow bolts splatter dust in the ground. Yu Wancheng nodded slightly. The crossbow used by the Ning Guojun also used projectiles, and the visual range was also about 200 paces, and it was obvious that the crossbow sold to the Changzhou army was also the crossbow of the Ning Guojun.

Ning Guojun took another ten steps, "Volley!" The first row of crossbowmen fired a volley, and then stooped down to mount their crossbows, while the second and third rows of crossbowmen collectively stepped forward and squeezed forward from the first row of crossbowmen; Ten more paces, a second row of crossbowmen fired a volley; Ten more paces, the third row of crossbowmen fired a volley. At this time, the original first row of crossbowmen had also returned to their positions.

The crossbowmen fired a continuous volley, ten rounds of throwing, and Ning Guojun took another hundred steps. Everyone was dazzled, and the sword and shield soldiers behind the front line had taken the javelins from the chariot at some point, and as the pikemen took ten steps further, the sword and shield soldiers shouted, and a row of javelins was thrown. Yu Wancheng's pupils shrank, knowing that this was powerful. Looking at the situation of the javelin, it should be a soft javelin with a wooden pole, and I saw that these soldiers threw together, and the distance was about 100 steps, which was obviously practiced for a long time. Yu Wancheng naturally didn't know that this group was called a grenadier by Li Congyi, and when they encountered the Song heavy infantry, they wanted to rush forward and throw fire oil bombs, and the bidding guns were actually practiced by the way. The sword and shield men threw three rounds of javelins, and the pikemen had advanced to fifty paces.

At this point, the crossbowman no longer fires a salvo and fires freely. The pikemen, on the other hand, formed in formation to the beat of drums. However, just when Yu Wancheng thought that the pikemen would trot until they charged, he found that the pikemen were still unhurried, completing the last fifty steps. Then one stands, another turns to the right, and with a shout of kill, the first row of pikemen thrusts to the left, and then the back row moves forward from the gap, repeating the action of standing right and turning left thrusting.

Yu Wancheng's first thought was, will this work? But seeing the spear stabbing and those straw dummies or stake dummies were pierced with a single shot, the second thought was that these soldiers of the Ning Guojun walked straight and straight in front of the enemy like this, is this way of moving?

But no matter what, if the other soldiers of the Ning State Army have half of the elite of this personal guard battalion, then the Ning State Army is enough to be used by the main force.

Back in Shuaitang, the atmosphere is different again.

"The soldiers of Ningguo are well-trained, and the Jiangguo Gong is well-governed, which is really a blessing for the Tang Dynasty! This time it is bound to make Wu Yuejun disgraced. Yu Wancheng's words this time were much more sincere than the perfunctory praise at the beginning.

"Before, Lord Yu said that this battle is headed by my father, this still counts, right?" After Li Congyi finished showing off his skills, he came to ask for this command.

Yu Wancheng hesitated slightly, and Li Congyi added, "Of course, the specific command of defending the city is still the responsibility of Lord Yu, but in the battle with Wu Yue in Changzhou, this prince also has some plans and some measures to defend the city, and wants to assign you." It is not that the government wants to seize power, but in fact, the victory or defeat of this battle has a bearing on whether our army can temporarily extinguish the war on the Eastern Front in one battle, and we must make sure that the whole army is united and goes all out. ”

Yu Wancheng no longer twisted his posture, and immediately said that the Changzhou army was sent by the Guogong.

Li Congyi asked Lu Shilang to explain the Changzhou battle defense plan. After listening, Yu Wancheng also felt that how crazy a person would have to be to make such a plan? However, if you want to inflict heavy casualties on Wu Yue's army, the traditional model of defending the city and killing 1,000 enemies and inflicting 800 self-losses is certainly not possible. Then try Jiang Guogong's method.

However, hearing that Jiang Guogong was going to withdraw the 5,000 defenders of Wuxi and the 2,000 defenders of Yixing to defend Changzhou, Yu Wancheng still couldn't help it: "Lord Guogong, abandoning the city without a fight is a capital crime." ”

Jiang Guogong smiled faintly, "This duke dares to lead more than 10,000 Ningguo troops to defend Changzhou without disobeying military orders, and Lord Yu doesn't even have the courage to abandon the defense of Wuxi and withdraw to the five thousand soldiers?" ”

Wuxi City is, of course, a dead place, and when the Wu Yue army comes to attack, there is no need to attack the city, only more than 10,000 men and horses need to surround it. When Changzhou is down, Wuxi can only surrender; In the worst-case scenario, if the deputy commander of the right wing in Wuxi surrenders early, Changzhou will lose 5,000 combat strength in vain. In Wuxi, 5,000 people were apportioned among the 10,000 Wu Yue army; The same ratio is true in Changzhou. If Jiang Guogong's plan is sold, it will be a trouble to drag it to Changzhou City to defeat Wu Yue's army, but more than 10,000 Wu Yue troops under Wuxi City. It is better to gather troops in Changzhou, if the main force of Wu Yue is defeated, then Wuxi is not something that Wu Yue can defend.