"Yancheng is worthy of being the key to Yingchuan. Although the city is not big, it is not as high as the walls and strong buildings, but it is surrounded by water on all sides. The Cao army sets up heavy troops in advance, and it is really difficult to attack.

Do all the ministers have good plans to destroy the city? Or will our army let the Cao army blindly fight and seek field battles according to the original plan?"

It was also his first time to come to Yuzhou. After observing the defense under the Yancheng city where the two armies confronted each other, he pulled his horse and pointed it from a distance, and casually discussed with the three ministers around him.

Next to him, Huang Zhong and other military generals led elite iron-armored cavalry guards. Huang Zhong, who was over 55 years old, was mostly old for outsiders, but he was unwilling to accept his fate.

Every time His Majesty personally inspected the camp or inspected the battlefield, Huang Zhong had to protect his armor with a sharp look. He always held his treasure bow with a tense tense of five stones, and occasionally shot and killed some scouts from Cao's army who came to test against each other to show his courage and endurance.

Among the counselors asked by Liu Bei, Zhuge Liang was most familiar with the geography of Yingchuan County. He did not seek cleverness, but only helped the monarch interpret the difficulty of offense and defense from the most objective perspective:

"Your Majesty also saw that there is Ru River in the north of Yancheng and Li River in the south. Moreover, Ru and Li meet here, clamp the east of the city, and the whole city can only attack the west.

Guo Jia, on the order of Cao Cao, built a defense line along the Ru River in Yancheng at the same time as the Battle of Hebei last year. He dug several deep trenches and deep trenches in the west of the city, dug out rammed earth as a wall, and cut off the Ru River to the Lishui River, without any flaws.

Now in April, the situation is getting better. In the middle of winter, Guo Jia also asked someone to build a floating bridge on Rushui to connect the defenders on the east coast. After this continuous line of defense, at least tens of thousands of people were guarding it.

But if we cannot open up here, the military rations from our army from the Lishui River and the military river will not continue to flow downstream and penetrate deep into the heart of the Yuzhou Plain.

Then the value of building the Nanyang Canal cannot be reflected. It just caused a huge amount of materials to transport less than 300 miles more waterways, and the road ahead was still broken.

I believe that even if it is difficult to attack, our army must set an end to win so that Cao Cao can firmly believe that we must break through Yuzhou and believe that we have no other purpose in building the canal, just to destroy him."

After listening to Lu Su and Ju Su, they also agreed with this judgment. The army of 200,000, claims to be 300,000, Taishan came to the top and opened up the golden waterway without a few hub battles. Cao Cao would still think you are playing.

Yancheng, Xuchang, and Ruyang, these key estuary fork nodes, and the keys to the canal network connecting the Huanghuai River must be taken down!

Even if we do not attack from Yuzhou in the future, we will still win it.

Lu Su is Zhuge Liang's brother-in-law, and he has no psychological burden when he agrees with Zhuge Liang's suggestions: "Zhuge Shangshu is proficient in craftsmanship, especially in the methods of fighting skills. With Zhuge Shangshu's early cooperation with him, it will be much safer.

In my opinion, there are still many catapults, and the trench walls have been broken through, and within a few months, they can always break the city and annihilate the enemy. As for crossing the Ru River before breaking the city, it is a bit risky.

Cao's army has many troops stationed along the river, and our vanguard will be attacked halfway through the river no matter where we cross the river. It is better to completely remove the Yancheng on the west bank of the Ru River and then consider crossing the river."

After Lu Su finished speaking, Ju Su said with a little concern: "If you don't cross the Ru River, you will not be able to completely cut off the retreat route of the defenders in Yancheng. Even if you gradually erode and break the city defense and the outer depth of the defense line, Cao's army can retreat from the water surface in an orderly manner in advance.

In this way, our army was consumed by Cao's army's land use. We paid the price to attack the enemy, but could not completely wipe out the defending enemy. When Cao's army used the same tricks again and used the Central Plains River network to block them layer by layer, it would probably take a long time to waste the people and cause money."

Zhuge Liang defended: "It should not be that the Rushui defense line on Yancheng was after the end of the Kunyang Battle more than a year ago, when Cao's army retreated and retreated to this point, and it took a long time to gradually build up.

It is impossible for every river to have such strict defense in the future, and Cao's army does not have so much manpower. It is acceptable to pay a little more supplies and time on the first line of defense."

After the two sides had a friendly discussion about things and people, Liu Bei made the decision:

"Money and food are spent on a long time, so it's fine. Anyway, it has restrained Cao Cao's troops. We are afraid of consuming Cao Cao and also afraid of consuming it. Hundreds of thousands of people have been stationed in the transportation of military rations for a long time, and he can't hold on.

As Kong Ming said, the rest of the tactical details of the siege were adapted to local conditions and did not require any instructions."

...

The Han army soon began to deploy the attack positions. After Zhuge Liang carefully observed and sorted out the terrain of the opposite defense line, he also felt that it was indeed slow to hit the enemy layer by layer, but he still had to fight tentatively first.

The defense line here has a feeling similar to the battle in Hanoi four years ago. The enemy is delayed in defense, but they will never fight with you on the fortification-free plain.

In that battle four years ago, Zhuge Liang was still the chief of the Grand Marshal and participated in the battle with Grand Marshal Guan Yu. Although he won in the end, Zhuge Liang knew it well in his heart—

The military supervisor on the opposite side at that time was Ju Su who had surrendered to become a colleague. If Ju Su had not been suspicious of being replaced by Yuan Shao in half and led to a collapse, the battle in Hanoi would have been much more difficult.

It took four or five days to prepare enough siege weapons such as siege, chariot, wooden donkey cart and other siege weapons to build corresponding fortifications, while taking advantage of this time, let Liu Bei send Huang Zhong out to fight.

Gao Shun wanted to follow Liu Bei to take charge of the main force of the central army. In addition, Gao Shun is serious and not good at cursing people, so the scolding battle has nothing to do with him. When there was insufficient staff, Gao Shun would rather send Liao Hua and Chen from his subordinates out and scold Huang Zhong separately.

The Cao army on the opposite side was indeed very slutty and could not come out from beginning to end. Not only did the defenders of Yancheng not come out, but even the people upstream and downstream of the Rushui defense line did not come out.

Huang Zhong bluffed enough to curse Cao Cao's ancestors and all the branches of the Xiahou family in the Cao family. Sometimes he even scolded him until it was hot at noon, and he sat or slept and ridiculed him.

Although there was no practical effect, it also made the Cao army believe that the Han army had at least 300,000 elite troops here, and their troops were stronger than the Cao army, otherwise the Han army would not be so arrogant.

Starting from the sixth day, Zhuge Liang, who had prepared enough equipment, launched the first tentative attack on the Yancheng defense line.

The layers of earthen walls and trenches outside the city are actually not strong, mainly because there are many, and the distance between each path does not exceed the range of ordinary crossbows.

Moreover, Cao's army obviously knew the lessons of Yuan Shao's failure four years ago and would summarize and improve. Therefore, Guo Jia also made some optimizations for the trench in front of each rammed earth corridor, from a concave trench to a wedge trench. When the defense line behind fired at the lost defense line in front, the dead corners would be smaller.

Zhuge Liang watched Gao Shun's troops easily smash the first wall on the periphery, and temporarily suppressed the Cao army's crossbowman behind the wall with additional gravel rain.

Then Gao Shun asked the elite soldiers to go up and tentatively rob. Because the gap in the protective wall was not big enough, he encountered a counterattack from Cao's army behind him, fighting with more and less, and they were all dense spearmen.

According to the experience explained by Zhuge Liang before the war, Gao Shun also tried to push his crossbowmen upwards, trying to grab the first wall, and then relying on the wall to cover and shoot the Cao army's spearmen in dense array between the first and second walls.

However, this attempt soon encountered the second investment of the Cao army's crossbowman. The Cao army's crossbowman had just temporarily retreated under the blow of gravel rain. When he found that the Han army's crossbowman wanted to push forward, he started to work again.

Even though the Han army immediately kept the catapult cart from fire and splashed gravel at the wall, Cao's crossbowmen still pushed up with strict military discipline.

As the distance between the two sides became very close, the Han army's catapult also lost its place to use: in this era, the range of the catapult had a 300-30-step error of 30 to 40 steps. After the distance between the two sides was shortened to within fifty steps, the gravel rain of the catapult car would be covered by no difference, regardless of the enemy and us, and would only suffer both losses.

It's like the infantry charge in the Age of Hot Weapons, and they didn't dare to prepare for the firepower of shotguns after their infantry went up.

The chaotic fight lasted for half an hour. Zhuge Liang clearly observed the response and improvement between Cao's army and Yuan Shao's army back then. The gap between Yuan and Cao was realized that the level of preparation today was not enough to break through, so he asked Gao Shun to retreat.

Of course, Zhuge Liang could not directly command Gao Shun, so he still asked the emperor for orders.

After a tentative attack, the two sides counted the casualties, and the Han army still had a clear advantage, after all, the gap between weapons and equipment was obvious.

The four-pyramid spear and the horse-slaying sword are much stronger than the simple spear on the opposite side. Even if it is blocked, the width of the front expansion of the Han army is not large, and the number of people who can output firepower is far less than the other party, and they still obtain two or three times the damage. If it is compared with the number of casualties, it is more than five or six times the difference.

Obviously, the huge gap in the number of deaths in battle depends entirely on the iron armor rate of the Han soldiers. Even without iron armor, there are metal helmets and heart protection mirrors. These soldiers with full defense are still inevitably suffering from various minor injuries on the battlefield, especially blunt weapon injuries and impact trampling, but the mortality rate has dropped sharply.

The wounded soldier retreated and recuperated for a month. After recovering from the injured part, he was able to go to the battlefield again.

After Zhuge Liang tested the enemy's tenacity, he went back to discuss with Ju Shu:

"Jusu Shizhong, how do you think Guo Jia's 'elastic defense' tactical deployment is compared to you four years ago? When you used this method to exhaust the enemy, did you ever think about how to break the method and how to deal with your proud tactics?"

Ju Su was silent for a while and said pertinently: "Zhuge Shangshu's tactics of fighting a flexible battle of attrition are more proficient than four years ago. However, Guo Jia is also stronger than me in the past - it may not be that he is very intelligent and can be obviously more than me, but he is standing above my experience.

According to my view of the plan arranged by Zhuge Shangshu today, the key is that the catapult and the divine arm crossbow are not extended enough and the investment is not fast. So the enemy crossbowman was given the enemy crossbowman, and the catapult cannon temporarily retreated to the second line of defense. When our army charges, they will reinvest and minced meat with our army and consume it.

To solve this problem, we might as well increase the range of our army's god-arm crossbow to twice the ordinary Cao army's crossbow, or increase the range of our army's catapult car to twice the enemy's catapult car.

Once we can do this, our army can suppress the enemy's first and second walls outside the first walls, so how can they resiliently counterattack and commit to the enemy?"

After listening to Ju Su's explanation, Zhuge Liang nodded repeatedly: "What I thought was about the same. Since Ju Shizhong also thought this method was feasible, it was probably feasible. Now Cao's army uses crossbows to shoot at least 150 steps, and a little further 200 steps.

Our army's God-arm Crossbow has more than 250 steps, and it is still difficult to increase it to twice the enemy's army. The same is true for catapults. However, I can find another way to deploy the catapults and the God-arm Crossbow to make sure that you can hit the first and second walls at the same time by hiding outside the first wall."

Ju Su was quite interested when he heard this: "I would like to hear it carefully."

Zhuge Liang: "This is also when I was in the battle of Kunyang at the beginning of last year, I was thinking about how to break the defense line of Kunyang defending the city by myself. Later, I thought of a trick and discussed it with Pang Shiyuan.

Later last autumn, Pang Shiyuan used my trick to defeat Yuan Xi. Cao Cao's generals should not have experienced the siege of Jixian County in the past year. Cao Cao himself failed to save Youzhou and returned directly. I don't think Guo Jia could guess how tough Yuan Xi experienced before his death by relying on his imagination."

Zhuge Liang's idea was clear: since the range of existing weapons could not suppress the enemy's two lines of defense at the same time and prevent the retracted enemy from entering the first line of defense again, then dig the Z-shaped traffic trench and approach the deployment of the Divine Arm Crossbow and the Catastrophe.

If Cao's army is willing to come out to fight back and destroy the Han army's dig trenches and approach, that's fine, it's completely released from behind the long trenches in the earth wall and fight with you in a dignified field.
Chapter completed!