It was July 20 that Guo Si learned that Ma Chao's logistics was not obstructed by Han Sui at all. Another large number of military supplies, grain and equipment arrived successfully at Ma Chao's camp on the front line of Cangsong County.

Just two days later, on July 22nd, Guo Si received another bad news, Jincheng was captured, and Han Sui had already been awarded the title.

In fact, if Li Su didn't specifically carry out confidentiality work and blockade of information, and calculated by breaking the city on July 12th, if there was a courier from Kuang to Guo Si, it would be known at most on the 16th and 17th. It would not take long for Kuang to run from Jincheng to Guzang to run.

The reason why it is so good to keep it so secret is that it took six more days. Li Su also did not want Guo Si to jump over the wall too soon, and he was eager to drag Guo Si to the point where the wheat in Wuwei County was completely ripe and had to harvest in the autumn, which made Guo Si fall into a dilemma of having to make a decision.

On July 22, after learning all the bad news ahead, Guo Si immediately called Jia Xu and asked Jia Xu to give advice in a reproachful tone:

"Wenhe! You let me strengthen my walls and clear the fields. Wait until Han Sui cut off Ma Chao's food route and make him tired before fighting again. Now it's good! Ma Chao's supply is sufficient. Today, the scout just reported that Ma Chao has begun to harvest the wheat fields outside Cangsong County. What a bad inheritance!"

Guo Si's tone was so angry that it was like Xiang Yu was arguing with Song Yi. It was just like Song Yi's classic masterpiece, which was to say, "Let Qin and Zhao decide the outcome, let's 'take it away'."

Jia Xu's plan itself is actually fine and very orthodox. Ma Chao bypassed the tough city, Jincheng, and underestimated the enemy and advanced rashly despite the grain channels. Under normal circumstances, it should be a taboo for military strategists.

But who made Jia Xu and Han Sui's design result not good? It was as suspected to be a paper talk just like Song Yi.

Jia Xu had no choice but to make excuses for himself: "Man's plan is not as good as God's plan, please calm down the anger of the General of the Cavalry. Who would have thought that Ma Chao had already brought his main force 30,000 north to Wuwei, and the enemy troops left in Jincheng could only turn the weak and annihilate Han Sui?

For the current plan, the decisive battle will definitely be a decisive battle. If it is delayed for a long time, Guan Yu will lead his troops from Jincheng north and join forces with Ma Chao, it will be even more difficult for us to fight to the decisive battle.

However, it is still possible to wait for two or three days. While preparing for the decisive battle, we also urge the people to step up the harvest of autumn wheat, and even divide some auxiliary troops to help the people harvest. The wheat in Lingju County and Cangsong County will definitely not be saved, and the wheat in Wuci County may still be saved. Other counties west of Guzang must be used as military rations.

On the other hand, we were not sure of winning the decisive battle with Ma Chao. Although our army had 40,000 to 50,000 combat soldiers, there were only more than 20,000 veterans who had stayed since the reign of Taishi Dong, and their elite level was probably not comparable to Ma Chao. Ma Chao's army had 30,000, and the armor was far better than ours.

Since they failed to fully weaken Ma Chao in the war of attrition of the logistics, and had to fight, they could only ask the Qiang tribes of Qilian to join forces with us. Just as Han Sui invited Yang Qianwan and Song Jian to join forces, they were not surrendered by Guan Yu, but were killed by Guan Yu to intimidate the Qiang kings of Qilian, so that they were afraid that Guan Yu and Ma Chao would free up their hands to defeat each other in the future, so they could only join us."

After Jia Xu talked about such a big plan, Guo Si felt that it was fine when he heard this.

The examiner who didn't know the military might ask: Since Guo Si could still invite other Qiang tribe kings from Qilian Mountain to help the war, why didn't Jia Xu persuade Guo Si to invite him earlier?

Of course, this is because Guo Si had not made up his mind to fight a decisive battle earlier, and he was still hoping to consume Ma Chao's wave. If he had hired it early but did not have a bloody battle immediately, then wouldn't he have to pay the local military rations in Wuwei County to support the barbarians? How much extra expenses would be? The northwest region was so poor that it would be gone for the next year.

Guo Si is a military expert, so he won't ask this question.

In addition, there is no need to doubt the size of the Qiang tribe in the Xiliang area as early as Emperor Huan, the Qiang tribe in the Western Liang was the most prosperous in the time of the population explosion. Duan Yang confronted the Qiang tribes and counted "more than 4,000 tribes in the Western Qiang tribes."

Of course, at that time, the tribe statistics at that time were as long as they were at the village level, even if they were seventy or eighty households and three or four hundred people, they would be considered a tribe. The so-called four thousand tribes, more than 80% of them were such small village-level tribes.

Later, the ten years of fighting and war during the Duan Jin period suppressed more than half of the Qiang population. Later, it calmed down for fifteen years and then reproduced wildly. The battle continued during the Emperor Ling Dynasty. So far, it has been more than ten years of war and tribes have been constantly annexed. Roughly estimated, the number of small tribes with three or four hundred people should be reduced to less than one thousand and five hundred.

In other words, if there are more than 1,000 village-level tribes, each of which is 400,000,000 Qiang people, there are nearly 200 medium-sized tribes of the level of thousands, and hundreds of thousands of tribes.

So there are 1,500 large, medium and small tribes, and the total number is 1,500,000, and there is an estimated 2 million Qiang population. The barbarian kings of those largest tribes can pull out 10,000 or 20,000 soldiers. Each of the top 20 tribes can also pull out several thousand armed forces.

As for weapons and equipment, there is no guarantee. The Qiang people can only live by grazing and live by the whole people. The war soldiers have regular metal weapons, and temporary mobilization can only rely on wooden guns, kitchen knives and hunt bows to fight.

However, these Qiang people do not register households and pay taxes, so the population of Han people in Liangzhou, which is truly registered, seems to be only 500,000.

...

Guo Si discussed and analyzed the enemy situation with Jia Xu, and realized that relying on his current military strength may not necessarily lead to repelling Ma Chao. Since that is the case, life will be lived, and it can only be promised benefits, coercion, temptation, and pulling the barbarian kings.

In addition, Jia Xu also made a little strategic plan with Guo Si about how to fight after he was recruited to assist the war, thinking that he would make a long-term plan:

Jia Xu suggested that at that time, we should focus on eliminating the vitality of Ma Chao's cavalry troops in the field, and not fighting to the death with Ma Chao's infantry formation.

Although Jia Xu had not seen the specific difference between Ma Chao's caravan and the original Han army used the carriage, he knew that when the traditional chariot array formed into a circular formation, he could threaten the Xiliang cavalry like a hedgehog, but the mobility was poor, which led to the Xiliang cavalry being able to avoid the war if they wanted to avoid the war.

(Note: In history, when Zhuge Liang was engaged in the Eight Formation Chart, he invented the "side-box car", that is, one side of the car guard plate can be folded and raised in wartime to cover arrows. The purpose of this improvement is to save the weight of the car, because there is actually no need to add armor on the back side. Cars with symmetric guard plates on both sides were actually popular in the Eastern Han Dynasty, but they were more bulky and had low armor utilization efficiency.)

Now Ma Chao has 30,000 people and only 20,000 cavalry, and the rest are infantry. If Guo Si can't defend Guzang, as long as he delays enough time in Guzang, he will solve the problem of autumn food consumption in Guzang.

Then, as long as you try to kill Ma Chao's cavalry and have vitality, when Guzang cannot defend, you will retreat to Zhangye County and Jiuquan County in the Ruoshui River Basin. Even if Ma Chao's infantry soldiers are still alive, they will be abandoned and cannot keep up at all.

As long as you kill Ma Chao's cavalry more, there will be fewer troops who can chase Guo Si.

In Jia Xu's plan, he had no fantasy that he could survive the offensive of Liu Bei's army this year with just a Guzang County. The value of defending here is to delay the season suitable for combat and eat more local food to prevent Xiliang from turning more autumn grain into Ma Chao's supplies this year.

Guo Si did not have much objection to this plan. He just asked and confirmed one point: "If Guzang did not defend in the end, we retreated to Jiuquan, Zhangye, can we really defend it?"

Jia Xu was still very confident about this: "Of course, the reason why Guzang was difficult to conquer was because the enemy was forced to transport land was too short. The waves connected to the Yellow River and could flow all the way between Lingju County and Cangsong County, and between Guzang, the mileage of land was less than a hundred miles.

Since ancient times, land transportation has lost 20 times more than water transportation. We are here to eat up the autumn grain that Ma Chao can receive this year, and then retreat northwest to Zhangye, which means that Ma Chao will leave the water transportation for 500 miles, and to Jiuquan means that Ma Chao will leave the water transportation for 1,100 miles.

If he retreated to Juyanhai in the most extreme situation, it would be that Ma Chao thought he was Dou Xian or Huo Qubing? Even if he was so arrogant, the current court was not the time of Emperor Wu of Han, and he did not have the financial resources to support him in the land transportation of two thousand miles to pursue him.

During the reign of Emperor Wu of Han, he relied on transporting supplies to Huo Qubing three or four times more than combat horses to kill the Wolf Juxu. Ma Chao now has a total of 20,000 horses, which does not count the horses and horses we are about to consume in Guzang.

Even if he survived, according to Huo Qubing's configuration, he could only lead 4,000 cavalry to chase him to Juyanhai. The remaining 15,000 horses had to carry supplies. What would he use to fight us?

Our army is different. There are ships available in the Wushui River Basin in Zhangye County. Before we retreat to Zhangye, we first collected every ship in the Wushui River in the entire Jiuquan area of ​​Zhangye, and did not leave any of them for Ma Chao.

Even if we want to retreat to Juyanhai, we will have our own ship and water transportation. The transportation loss of Zhangye Jiuquan along the way is twenty times lower than that of Ma Chao. Even if Ma Chao has three heads and six arms, he will definitely die!"

After hearing this, Guo Si finally regained his confidence and decided to fight in the field to annihilate Ma Chao's cavalry power and reduce Ma Chao's horse. As long as Ma Chao's horse is consumed a large amount, Guzang can finally block it even if he loses it!

At that time, let Ma Chao see the power of Ju Yanhai in winter, put Ma Chao into a strategic depth of two thousand miles, and all of them are frozen to death by the Ju Yan Beach.

Although Guo Si and Jia Xu didn't know the deeds of the Head of State and Comrade Stalin, they all thought of similar ideas to the Russians in later generations who fought wars, put the enemy to death in winter, and the entire Moscow army had to eat but no food, no fuel.

This is a proven trick that even the Head of State and Napoleon can kill. What is Ma Chao?

The backup plan of the poisonous soldier Jia Xu is indeed cruel and decisive, and is well-deserved.

On July 26, as Ma Chao rushes to harvest wheat from Lingju County and Cangsong County, and starts harvesting work in Wuci County.

Guo Si has also cut all the wheat in the counties behind Wuwei County, including the west of Guzang County.

At the same time, the two or three local Qiang tribes in the Qilian Mountains of Wuwei County were found by Guo Si. Because he was afraid that Li Su would transform and liquidate him in the future, he sent a delegation to keep warm and brought cavalry to join forces with Guo Si.

In the entire Wuwei County, only half of the county's wheat bordering the war zone in the eastern part of Guzang County, and the wheat in the war zone had not been cut yet. Because these places are very close to the war zone, both sides are the most cautious, and a large number of soldiers were sent to protect the wheat, and they would fire at any time.
Chapter completed!