Chapter 497 Ice and Fire

A few days later, Liu Xuanji led his army to Fangtou.

I heard that the Tang army had already built a city on the other side of the river two days ago, and also used the method of watering the city wall. I came to the bank of the Qi River with great interest to look at the so-called watering city wall on the other side of the river.
The so-called city building by the Tang army was a low wall built with the soil dug from the trenches, and it was mainly a civil structure. The so-called watering was just the outer layer.
This kind of fortress is actually far inferior to a real city with complete defense facilities. The wall is less than ten feet high, but it is enough.
Because the horses could not pass through and there were trenches, a lot of civil engineering work was still needed to break through this kind of fortification.
It's not much different from siege.
Moreover, according to the scouts' reports, the Tang army was still constructing a large-scale camp behind the city walls along the river.
There are arrow towers, watchtowers, chevaux deer horns, trenches and other facilities.
In other words, even if they captured all the cities in front of them in one go, the enemy could still retreat to the camps behind and continue to fight the Han army.
Dongfang Di, Fu Hongzhi and others were somewhat depressed. After all, they had not gained any advantage in the continuous battles with the Tang army in the past few days.

The consecutive defeats also affected the morale of the Han army to a certain extent.

Liu Xuanji also noticed something strange and laughed, "Even though I fought with Li Silang, we were evenly matched. The generals were able to defend the west of the Qi River, which was a credit to them. There is no need to blame yourself. Moreover, Li Yuanhui has been unstoppable for half a month and has captured more than ten cities. Now he has to dig deep trenches and high ravines. Isn't it because the generals fought bravely that he had to take a defensive position?"

Liu Xuanji's words made everyone look much better.

However, it is impossible to achieve a quick victory at the moment. The Tang army has already formed a line of defense and is building a second line of defense.

If the Han army fought hard, it would not be impossible to take down the camp built by the Tang army, but what would happen after you took it down? The enemy still had a lot of fortifications waiting for you to gnaw on.

This will have a greater impact on morale, so Liu Xuanji is a little hesitant now. It will obviously be disadvantageous to the Han army for both sides if the battle continues like this.

More than 10,000 elite soldiers of Su Dingbian are still besieged in Wen County and Yewang. Although they are safe in the short term, they cannot be left alone in the long run.

So, Liu Xuanji is considering whether to continue dividing the troops?

Our military advantage is no longer obvious.

If we continue to divide our forces, this battle would probably fall completely into the Tang army's calculations.

Liu Xuanji was very worried, and so was Li Yuanhui. Although the Tang army had temporarily gained a certain degree of initiative on the battlefield, in the long run, it would still be difficult to find loopholes in the Han army and defeat them.

Because the confrontation area between the two sides is now concentrated in the Hanoi area, the Han army can save a lot of effort by relying on Yecheng to supply food and grass. The Han army can fight at the doorstep without worrying about consumption. It will be difficult to cut off the opponent's food supply, and even have to be careful of their own food supply.

Li Yuanhui was thinking, how to mobilize the enemy and make them fall into the dilemma of fighting on multiple fronts?
When Li Yuan was in power a few years ago, his relationship with the Turks was quite good. He could buy a lot of war horses from the Turks every year to supplement the cavalry, and the Turks would also harass the borders of Northern Han from time to time.

But since Li Yuan stopped caring about things, the Turkic Khan Shibi died and was replaced by the current Khan Jili, and the Turks began to get closer to the Northern Han.

On the one hand, he was convinced by Liu Xuanji's defeat, and on the other hand, his relationship with the Tang Dynasty continued to deteriorate.

So now the Turks have become a ally of the Northern Han, and the two countries have formed an alliance in earnest. Liu Xuanji even chose a Turkish princess as the crown prince's concubine for his son.

It is impossible to expect the Turks to provide the same assist as in the first Battle of Jinyang, and even Guanzhong and Longyou have to be on guard.

Therefore, there are not many places to consider, and the place where the Tang Dynasty can easily send troops is Jinyang.

Li Yuanhui immediately wrote a letter to Chang'an, hoping that Hedong could send troops to threaten Jinyang and relieve some pressure on Luoyang.

Unlike the stalemate in Luoyang, where the Tang army was struggling to maintain its position due to lack of manpower, the Tang army was making rapid progress in Jingzhou. The comparison between the two sides was like heaven and hell.

With the change of ownership of Xiangfan, the Han River has completely fallen into the hands of the Tang army.

Li Sanlang also did a very good job in united front work. By using both kindness and force, he quickly integrated some forces.

In December, Li Sanlang left Li Daliang, the governor of Jingzhou, to guard Xiangfan, and then summoned tens of thousands of Xiangfan tyrants and surrendered soldiers to accompany him. He still maintained the scale of 100,000 troops and continued to march south to join the army led by Li Yaoshi and Lu Qin in Jiangling. Jiangling is an important town on the Yangtze River. Cao Ren relied on Jiangling City to resist Zhou Yu's siege for almost a year. Zhu Ran relied on Jiangling City to withstand the siege of hundreds of thousands of Wei troops and remained unmoved.

Of course, the most difficult to settle among the three Jiangling battles of the Three Kingdoms was Guan Erye's "carelessness in losing Jingzhou". But was Guan Erye really careless?

You must know that Zhu Ran was able to withstand the siege of Cao Wei's hundreds of thousands of troops for more than half a year thanks to the new city of Jiangling built by Guan Erye.

If there hadn't been a traitor, could Wujun have taken over Jiangling?

Hard to say.

At present, the structure of Jiangling still continues the Jiangling City rebuilt by Guan Yu, which is divided into the new city, the old city and the double city. The 180,000 Tang troops surrounded Jiangling and then built a large number of new catapults "Shenji Cannon". At the same time, Li Xuanqing sent General Zhang Pinggao with 20,000 elite troops and 20,000 navy and hundreds of ships of Lu Qin's army to meet the army leaving Shu.

Lu Qin's navy and Zhang Pinggao's infantry and cavalry advanced side by side, and together with Yizhou Governor Wang Yao and General Liu Zheng, they attacked the Wei navy's general You Zilu's troops.

The Wei army was defeated, with tens of thousands of soldiers surrendering, and generals such as You Zilu were all captured.

The three armies penetrated the east and west, and only Jiangling was left north of the Yangtze River.

At the same time, the Eastern Wei, which had been gathering strength for several years, also sent out troops.

In December, after several months of planning, the emperor of Eastern Wei personally led an army of 160,000 troops out of Jingkou. This time the army's attack direction was still Ruxukou.

This time, the Eastern Wei was well prepared. They used small boats to burn the wooden fences of the water fort, then used large ships to attack and break into the water fort, then attacked from both sides.

Thousands of arrows were fired from the powerful bows and crossbows at Ruxu Fort, causing huge casualties to the Eastern Wei army.

The siege equipment of the Eastern Wei army was almost all built in the south of the Yangtze River, and some were assembled directly on the north bank and put into battle. The Eastern Wei army set up catapults and crossbows, which also caused great casualties to the defenders in Ruxu Fort. The battle was extremely brutal.

Although Xiahou Yuanhong led his troops out of the city for a surprise attack at night and burned more than a dozen catapults, it did not help the overall situation.

On the second day, the Eastern Wei army continued its offensive. While suffering huge casualties, it also had no intention of giving the Tang army a chance to catch its breath.

In fact, the reinforcements had already arrived. General Pingdong Zhang Gonglie, General Longxiang Zhou Qiu, and General Huwei Li Feng each led thousands of troops to rush to Ruxuwu, but they were all blocked by the Eastern Wei army.

When the battle was at its climax, Yu Pinghai, a general of the Tang army's navy, led a small boat to break through the Eastern Wei army's defense line on the Ruxu River and successfully assisted Xiahou Yuanhong's troops to break out of the siege.

After withdrawing Xiahou Yuanhong's troops, Ruxuwu was abandoned by the Tang army.

The Tang army quickly retreated to Ruxu Mountain, Qibao Mountain and the East and West Passes, while the Eastern Wei army took advantage of the situation and advanced, preparing to continue attacking the East and West Passes.

At this time, the Tang army had less than 20,000 troops on the Ruxu Mountain front, and most of them were powerful troops.

The Eastern Wei army had more than 150,000 soldiers and all the troops in Jiangdong were captured.

(End of this chapter)