Volume 1 Chapter 76: Before the Battle (Part 1)
"Fourth Prince, I, General A Li, did not come here to answer your question on the orders of my Meng An, but asked me to ask you three questions first!"
As the envoy sent by Jin Wushu hurriedly turned back, a centurion and deputy general under Puluhun also came to the general platform. He was riding a big horse, wearing iron armor, carrying a big bow, and wearing cowhide armor, revealing only a pair of eyes. This outfit was in stark contrast to Jin Wushu's morning-grumpy outfit. Since he had arrived, he did not dismount but bowed and called out from a distance, his voice muffled. "I wonder if the Fourth Prince is willing to listen?"
"Tell me the story!" Wanyan Wushu stood up on the platform, raised his chin and gestured slightly, but his anger seemed to have not subsided.
" First question, is it the Fourth Prince who wants to win?" the deputy general asked seriously.
In response, Wanyan Wushu just snorted coldly.
"The second question is, if we want to win, should we attack?" the deputy continued to ask. "If we want to attack, is it better to use cavalry or infantry? And in the current situation, we are trapped in the camp hastily and lost the initiative. How can the cavalry attack?"
This time, Wuzhu suddenly turned his anger into laughter.
"The third thing my Meng'an said is that he wants the soldiers to have some dry food, and then watch the Song army fill up the eastern trench for us, tear down the inner low wall and the last layer of the fence. I wonder if the Fourth Prince will continue to send people to ask?" Ali didn't see Jin Wushu's knowing smile, so he threw out the third sentence and rode back in a hurry without waiting for a reply.
Jin Wushu was delighted, and turned around again, raised his chin and asked Shi Wenbin: "How is it, are we Jurchens just as I just said? Tell me the truth, among you Han people, let alone now, have you ever had a hero like Puluhun since ancient times?"
Shi Wenbin was also quite shocked at first, but after hearing this, he obviously hesitated to speak.
"Is there really one?" Jin Wushu was not angry, but sat down again and continued to eat.
"Indeed, there was one, but he was just a Sinicized Khitan general, the kind that you can call Han Chinese." Shi Wenbin forced a smile. "But it was also a story from the Tang Dynasty. When General Alibu opened his mouth just now, I thought of it..."
"No matter whether it is the Khitan or the Tang Dynasty, it is what I am talking about."
"The situation is quite similar to that of the famous Tang general Li Guangbi when he was besieged by the rebels during the An-Shi Rebellion..." Shi Wenbin said slowly. "The enemy outnumbered us, and we were trapped in the camp on all sides. The commander was sitting on the platform, but he saw a general under his command who was in charge of everything and watched the enemy attack without making any effort. Li Guangbi asked this person, and he said that if the enemy filled up the trenches and pushed down the fences, it would be a good opportunity to lead the troops to attack!"
"Did it work?" Jin Wushu was slightly curious.
"It worked!" Shi Wenbin did not dare to delay and answered immediately. "But it was very dangerous. Because once it happened, the victory or failure of the battle would depend on whether the general could break out in one breath, and the victory or failure would hang on a thread. So in that battle, even Li Guangbi hesitated again and again and sent people to inquire repeatedly. But in the end, Li Guangbi still believed the general, and it finally worked..."
"That's it. If you Han people can do it, we Jurchens can do it!" Jin Wushu answered proudly. "And I'm definitely not as stingy as that Li... Just wait and see. I won't send anyone to ask Puluhun again today!"
"The Fourth Prince is very heroic." Shi Wenbin said cautiously. "But the Fourth Prince, since General Puluhun intends to open the gate to meet the enemy, there is a possibility of a melee in the camp. Do you want to put on your armor and find a mount before eating, just in case?"
"Why wear armor? What's the point of preparing for an emergency? Even if there really is an emergency, how can the East Camp not resist? How could they allow the Song army to attack here? Come on, pour me some wine!" Jin Wushu said with disdain.
Shi Wenbin had no choice but to nod repeatedly and continue serving the other party wine.
How much of Jin Wushu's arrogance was due to his truly arrogant character that he had developed over the years, and how much was just a posturing to calm people's hearts? Not to mention Shi Wenbin, even the Fourth Prince of Jin himself couldn't tell.
But no matter what, an obvious fact is that the war broke out suddenly, and most of the Jin army was called out of bed and rushed into battle without even having time to eat. They were also attacked from all sides. At this time, as the commander-in-chief, Jin Wushu was simply unable to command with ease... In fact, at this time, he could only rely on his officers and fight on their own in the core camp.
Of course, it is also a fact that the Jin army, which had been victorious for a long time, was in high spirits and firmly believed that victory would belong to them if they persisted, and they were not shaken by this.
Moreover, turning to the entire battlefield, facing the stalemate, the two highest commanders of the Song army, Zhang Jun and Han Shizhong, who had been personally ordered by Emperor Zhao at the previous imperial meeting and who followed the flag signals of Commander Zhang behind the battle line and the orders of Commander Han in front of the battle line, did not seem to play much of a role.
Once the battle broke out, Zhang Jun basically only sent out the supervision team and the merit-commissioning team, and did nothing else, just letting the generals on the front line fight on their own; as for Han Shizhong himself , he was obviously the actual initiator of this battle and he was obviously on the front line, but he just rode a horse with a flag, leading thirty or fifty cavalrymen to circle around the Jin army camp, but no military orders were issued... until he saw this strange scene in the east, and then he finally sent out his personal cavalry with command flags on their backs, but they came towards the top of Xiacai City.
"Our commander Han requests an order from the city to send reinforcements to the east. Listen to his command!" The knight galloped directly into the city, dismounted, and then walked quickly to the top of the city wall holding the command flag, then knelt on one knee and shouted loudly.
"Ridiculous!" Zhang Jun was furious after a moment's thought. If the emperor was not beside him, he would have cursed. "In terms of the strength of the army, isn't it your commander Han's trusted general Wang Heilong (nickname of Wang Sheng) who led 3,000 soldiers to the east? They are not weak. And all the soldiers are out, the only two reserve elite troops are your commander Han's 1,000 Beiwei troops and 1,000 Cuipian troops, but they are resting behind the dike now... Let me ask you, he has his own soldiers but he doesn't use them, why is he asking me, an empty-handed man, to support his men? Is Wang Heilong such a loser? Such a loser, how could he be the first to pull out the outer fence of the Jin army?"
"My commander said so!" The knight looked up at the confused civil and military officials, as if he had received an order. He was not afraid at all. "In a surprise attack, victory or defeat depends on a meal. If we cannot win quickly, we will just drag it out. It may seem that we have the upper hand, but it is just a waste of effort. We will just wait for the three armies to become exhausted and invite the Jin army to counterattack! Since the opportunity to fight in the east has already appeared, we only need to maintain the rest of the places. We should do our best in the east..."
"You've been talking for so long, but have you ever explained clearly why you don't use the reserve troops in his hands, but instead use the troops that are in the midst of a fierce battle?" Zhang Jun became more and more angry, and he wished he could immediately order the execution of this soldier.
"My commander didn't say this..." After the knight finished his narration, he looked at the furious Commandant Zhang and the high-ranking civil and military officials with pale faces, and he suddenly became discouraged.
Zhang Jun was so angry that he wanted to drive the man out of the city.
Uh, I must take this opportunity to say a few more words here.
At this time, the battle was basically carried out according to the plan made by Han Shizhong that day. Under the personal command of Zhao Jiu, the Song army gathered various units, deployed precious armor and weapons, and gathered a total of more than 12,000 soldiers... This was the real combat force of the imperial camp, which theoretically numbered as many as 40,000 on the Shouzhou battlefield, and actually could number as many as 60,000 including civilian laborers.
To be honest, Emperor Zhao himself didn't know whether he should feel pity or be thankful that he could finally come up with this number.
Then, according to the pre-arranged deployment, the less than 13,000 soldiers were roughly led by Qiao Zhongfu, Zhang Jing, Liu Bao, Huyan Tong, and Yang Yizhong, who led 4,000 soldiers to the west of the Jin army camp, that is, to launch a frontal attack from the direction of Xiacai City; Tian Shizhong's troops and part of Zhang Jun's troops, who were not elite, went around the north to block the enemy's feint attack, but in fact they quickly dug trenches to prevent the enemy from breaking out by cavalry when they were surrounded on three sides, which in turn caused large-scale casualties in the Song army; in the west, the Huaihe River direction could not deploy too many troops, so Wang De's troops and Fu Qing's troops who volunteered to fight with several hundred soldiers, together with 2,000 soldiers, took the lead; in the east, Wang Sheng, the general of the central army under Han Shizhong, led 3,000 soldiers to participate in the siege...
As for the only reserve force, it was none other than the 2,000 elite troops under Han Shizhong's command. One was his Beiwei Army, and the other was his Cuipian Army. The former was actually cavalry, but had only seven or eight hundred people, and had just arrived from the south bank of the Huai River recently; the latter had more than a thousand, and were the Song Army's most skilled crossbowmen.
Therefore, what Zhang Jun said actually made a lot of sense, and most of the civil and military officials on the city who knew the general military situation nodded in agreement, or understood the anger of General Zhang.
But at this moment, someone suddenly spoke from behind, which made Zhang Boying tremble with fear: "I am the Minister of Censorship Zhang Jun. I ask the emperor to issue a clear order to approve General Han's words... I just saw with my own eyes that General Han's flag has circled the Jin camp. He must know more about the situation in front of the battle than those on the city wall! At this time, you should trust the people you employ!"
