Sun Ce listened to the persuasion of Xu Kun and Cheng Pu, and decided to fight to the death with Zhuge Jin and Guan Yushui.

This decision was made at the end of April of the fifth year of Jian'an.

A few days later, with the assembly and mobilization of the Jiangdong Army, all kinds of abnormalities fell into the eyes of Zhuge Jin and Guan Yu on the north bank of the river. By the beginning of May, Zhuge Jin was already convinced that Sun Ce had been tricked and lured by himself.

However, Zhuge Jin was not in a hurry to fight this decisive battle immediately, he still maintained his original state, harassing each other while scouting and fighting, and at the same time letting Lu Yi and Zhang Duo, who led the naval army on Wang Lang's side, contain Sun Ce's rear coast.

The enemy dragged on for about ten days, until mid-May.

This move made Guan Yu and Chen Deng also a little puzzled.

On this day, it was 13 May, and the garrison of Guangling County had received two pieces of forward military information sent from Shouchun and Xiapi, but the content was exactly the same:

Cao Cao was defeated in two small-scale battles in Yanjin and Baima, but in the process of retreat, he also designed to kill Wen Chou in the chaotic army, causing considerable losses to the pursuing Yuan army.

At present, Cao's army has retreated to Guandu, re-stabilized the defensive line, and the Yuan army, which was following up, once again turned into a stalemate.

For this news, Zhuge Jin certainly did not feel the slightest surprise. He also thought that Yuan Shao was fighting slowly, and it took more than two months for the official exchange of fire to fully break through the Yellow River defense line and reach Guandu.

But for Guan Yu and Chen Deng, hearing that Yuan Shao had hit Guandu, they were really shocked, and they felt that this was a signal that "Cao Cao was about to be unable to support it", so they were very eager to weaken Sun Ce as soon as possible.

After Guan Yu heard the news, he and Chen Deng jointly found Zhuge Jin on the same day, and discussed: "Cao Cao was defeated and retreated to Guandu, and it is only one county away from Xudu, and there are only two hundred miles left at most, Yuan Shao will not destroy Cao Cao in one go, right?"

If Yuan Shao destroys Cao and coerces the Son of Heaven, the entire north is afraid that it will be decided, if we have not destroyed Sun Ce by then, will the alliance between Yuan Shao and the eldest brother turn their faces? Or will Yuan Shao force his eldest brother to surrender? Let's fight Sun Ce as soon as possible! ”

Zhuge Jin shook the folding fan lightly, signaling them to be calm and restless: "Don't worry, Cao Cao's toughness is not comparable to leisure, although he was defeated and retreated to Guandu this time, it may not be without the consideration of preserving strength and shortening the grain route, and the two armies should be able to hold each other for a long time."

Although I sought to lure the enemy and fight with Sun Ce, our army's current strength was insufficient after all. If Sun Ce is desperate, it is normal to gather another 30,000 or 40,000 sailors, and our army is only more than 8,000 sailors drawn from Jiangnan, and there are only 5,000 or 6,000 people available from Xuzhou to the south, adding up to 134,000 at most, which is only one-third of the enemy's number.

If we cannot seek a battlefield environment that is absolutely favorable to our army, and if we cannot ensure victory at the right time and place? ”

When Guan Yu and Chen Deng heard this, they also thought about it a little. Chen Dengjiu was in Guangling, and he was quite familiar with the surrounding geography, and he had a little hazy idea in his heart, but he didn't dare to confirm it, so he asked tentatively:

"I don't know where Ziyu plans to fight Sun Ce? Could it be that the battlefield is not between Guangling and Dantu? ”

Zhuge Jin asked people to take a map and pointed to the showdown: "It seems that Yuanlong has also seen some clues, that's right, I plan to fight a decisive battle in a lower position, for example, the river near Hailing County."

Before the decisive battle, our army first set off at night with a fast boat, broke through the defense downstream, and put on a posture of going back to Wuxian and other places and plundering along the coast. After the old type of fighting ship is broken, it slowly advances - if we all use the new keel warship, the speed is too fast, and Sun Ce may not be able to catch up.

Mixed with some old-fashioned fighting ships, he deliberately slowed down the speed in order to seduce Sun Ce to catch up. The speed of the boat down the river is very fast, as long as there is a time difference of one or two hours, it is enough to tow to the east of Hailing.

It's close to the sea, it's more affected by the tides, and I'm waiting for a big tide day now. I'm going to strike on May 18, the day of the month when the tides are at their highest. The tide rises and goes down the river to the east, and when the tide rises, it turns around and kills back. In this way, no matter how much we go back and forth, we can get the benefits of the upstream smooth water.

I also sent secret envoys in advance to quietly contact the Gu family in Wu County, and they had their own channels to get in touch with a certain stronghold in Haiyan County that was originally 'Pirate Island', and asked Lu Yi to take the naval division of Fujian to ambush on the sea at the mouth of the southeast river in Hailing County on the afternoon of the 18th day of the Great Tide of May to join our army. In this way, in the event of a decisive battle, our army will have an additional 4,000 water combat troops. ”

Although Chen Deng is a native of Guangling, he was still amazed after listening to Zhuge Jin's strict layout: "I have been in Guangling for decades, and I only vaguely know that the sea tide is larger in the middle of the month, but Ziyu is carefully observant, and can calculate that the eighteenth day of each month is the day of the highest tide, admiration." ”

Some people may think that it is a bit of a wisdom to describe an old Guangling like Chen Deng as having such a low understanding of the sea tide, but this is really the truth in the late Han Dynasty.

First, the people of the Han Dynasty never thought of using the tide, but only used the tide as a landscape, and they could see it a few times.

The southern water wars in this era were also fought in the Yangtze River, and no one ever considered the impact of the tide on the water war. Nine out of nine water battles take place on the river further upstream.

Coincidentally, the first book in history to discuss the law of ocean tides in the form of words should have been "The Theory of Tides" written by Zhuge Jin's classmate Yan Yan Man, but Yan Jian has now been recruited by Liu Bei to do something else, and this book is probably not written.

Zhou Yu and Sun Ce don't understand the military application of the tide, which is really normal. After all, even a thousand years later, the Southern Song Dynasty Navy and Boyan's Mongol Navy were still not adapted to the coastal waters when they fought in the coastal water battle of Lin'an.

After Guan Yu and Chen Deng understood Zhuge Jin's reliance, they no longer questioned it, and let Zhuge Jin arrange the time and place of the proposed decisive battle, and they made specific tactical deployment adjustments according to the categories drawn by Zhuge Jin.

……

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The time soon came to May 18, the day of the high tide of the month.

Three days earlier, Guan Yu and Tai Shici had asked the troops to start jet lag, adjust their day and night schedules, and start sleeping from noon during the day.

In the early morning of the 18th, just after the hour, the troops were well fed and drunk, and they were ready to go. At the beginning of the ugly hour, the fleet sailed out of the mouth of the Hangou River one after another, entered the Yangtze River, and then went downstream.

About an hour and a half later, it was still dark, but because the fleet was too large, it had to be lit up in order to prevent chaos, and it was still discovered by Sun Cejun's sentry ship on the south bank. Sun Cejun's sentry ship relayed the fire horn and quickly transmitted back the enemy's attack information.

Sun Ce, who was still asleep, was woken up, and he didn't think much about it, so he immediately prepared the fleet and set sail to follow the guard.

Because of the different speeds of the various types of warships in the fleet, coupled with the large number of people, the sequence of sorties will naturally drag on for a long time. The fast ship had already traveled thirty miles, and the cumbersome ship had just left the port.

Sun Ce made Xu Kun the chief general of the vanguard fleet, with Huang Gai as the deputy, leading Ling Cao, Zhou Tai, and Jiang Qin to take the lead. He led the main force of the Chinese army's big ship, with Cheng Pu and Han Dang as his deputies, and was surrounded by a group of water war generals.

Considering that the troops might be disjointed, Sun Ce also warned Xu Kun before leaving: Don't rush too fast and stay too far away from the main fleet, in case Zhuge Jin and Guan Yu are deceitful and want to pull the Jiangdong Army to break through.

The Jiangdong army pursued for an hour in the dark, and the sky finally brightened, and Xu Kun, who was in the vanguard, soon found that Liu Beijun's fleet was not too far away from him, and it was basically still on the skyline of the river, and the lookout could see the mast of the ship in front.

"Report! General, you can see the enemy's fleet of large ships downstream, it seems that they are all fighting ships! It should be slower than us! ”

When Xu Kun heard the report, he immediately fell into a dilemma, although the degree was not deep.

He humbly asked Huang Gai: "General Huang, most of the pioneers of our army are ships, which are lower than fighting ships, which are not conducive to fighting, but the speed of the ship is faster than that of the other party. Do you want to catch up and bite and buy time for Bo Fu?

Isn't this an enemy's trick to lure our clippers into rushing first and then breaking them individually, right? ”

Huang Gai is also a first-line veteran of Sun Cejun's first line, after all, he also made a certain contribution to the deception plan during the Battle of Chibi in history. At that moment, Huang Gai thought for a moment and reminded:

"It's possible, but it's not necessarily the only thing. I heard that most of Wang Langjun's fast sea ships were also provided by Liu Bei. Liu Bei can have enough ships to distribute to Wang Lang, how can his own naval army not have enough new ships?

I heard that Liu Bei was in the Guangling Shipyard in Guangling County, and it started in the year when Yuan Shu became the emperor, that is, it was more than three years. For such a long time, he has been engaged in shipbuilding, and now, he still needs to use old-fashioned fighting ships? Is the new ship not enough? Or is it deliberately leaving some slow boats as bait? ”

Xu Kun touched his beard, he didn't care about Huang Gai's last worries: "This is not necessarily, Liu Beijun has built warships for three years, I know this, but they may not use so many sailors, and Liu Bei is now fighting Zhang Xian in Jingzhou, and it will also occupy a large number of sailors and ships."

This time, Zhuge Jin fought a decisive battle with us, and also sought the defenders of the East China Sea and Xiapi to go south and help in the battle. These two counties were only recovered by Liu Bei last year, and the local area was already in Huaibei, and there was originally no naval army.

These additional troops also need warships, and it is not surprising that the old ones are put to use. Who said that fighting ships can't fight water wars? It's just that the sailing is slower, and the combat power is not bad! ”

Xu Kun always firmly believed that Liu Beijun's new ship had the biggest advantage of being fast, but when it came to a hard time, the old warship had no disadvantage.

This is also what Zhou Yu led his troops to verify during the Fujian-China Water War last year. At that time, Zhou Yu's biggest problem was that he couldn't catch up with the nimble and erratic enemy, but as long as he caught up, he could still fight.

Huang Gai saw that Xu Kun denied his additional worries, and he also felt that it made sense, so he didn't insist anymore.

Xu Kun finally made up his mind, led the fleet to speed up slightly, and on the premise of keeping a distance from the enemy fighting ships in front, he flanked and harassed and delayed, but he was not allowed to stick to melee combat.

Once it was found that the enemy army had a tendency to turn back and fight to the death, it would immediately pull away and wait for Sun Ce's main force to catch up and fight a decisive battle.

In addition, if you find that there are other enemy fleets of clippers and your own vanguard may be outnumbered, then you must also turn around and retreat decisively, and do not fall into the trap of the enemy to fight more and fight less.

Xu Kun estimated the distance between himself and the enemy, as well as the distance from Sun Ce's main fleet of ships in the rear, and thought that he could ensure the safe entry of the army.

The fleet pursued from morning to noon, and was finally about to enter the battle distance safely. Xu Kun looked at the sky for a while, and asked the generals around him where he was here.

Huang Gai took a look at the scenery on both sides of the strait around him, and said very experiencedly: "The north shore of this place has just passed Hailing County, and the south bank should be Biling." The river narrows slightly, and in front of it is the horn mouth of the Yangtze River estuary, which suddenly becomes extremely wide. ”

It turns out that Hailing County is the Taizhou of the later generations, and Biling County is between Changzhou and Wuxi in the later generations.

The battlefield pursued by Xu Kun's fleet was about the Yangtze River between Jingjiang County, which was along the river in Taizhou City, and Jiangyin County, which was along the river in Wuxi City.

In the Han Dynasty, this was already the location of the Yangtze River horn, and further down, the Yangtze River Bay would suddenly widen and gradually connect with the sea.

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