Right now, I want to survive.
However, even these extraordinary actions took time. It took six or seven days before the troops gradually recovered their momentum and new supplies were gathered.
Then, the cold wind came, and what followed was an even more brutal war of attrition in the cold wind - because the biting cold wind brought huge trouble to both sides.
For the Song army, with their logistics supply lines being cut off on a large scale, all the supplies were stored before the freezing of the ice. Before the thaw, they had to live day by day, which was a typical case of eating up all the supplies.
Among them, fuel and food consumption increased dramatically with the arrival of the cold wind, which was beyond everyone's expectations. After all, Yue Fei and his staff were not gods, and they had never experienced a long-term winter camp for an army of this size, and they had to continue fighting... They could not understand why the people were still the same, and many of them had even died in the war, but the consumption changed dramatically just because it was a little colder. This was completely different from winter camps in peacetime.
With no other options, Hu Yin stepped forward, made the division himself, and began to distribute food in an organized manner.
Combat personnel were given priority, and the number of non-combat personnel under Hu Mingzhong was slightly reduced. Everyone began to have a quota to avoid being unable to survive the freezing period in case it was too long.
In this situation, the Song army was a little discouraged and the fighting was a little weak, but there was nothing they could do.
However, the Jin army was not much better off.
Although the Jin army was fighting on the interior front, its manpower was theoretically endless and it did not care about the lives of the civilians, but some things would not be problem-free just because they were unrestricted.
For example, under the repeated requests of Emperor Zhao, the Song army successively included earmuffs, gloves, and even masks into military supplies. This time, in preparation for war, they were one of the military supply reserves. Like military rations, they were all inspected by Emperor Zhao himself. Moreover, compared with other military equipment and armor, these things were not expensive. Basically, they cost millions and everyone had them. Of course, Yue Fei also had reserves here.
What about the Jin army? Although the Jin army had long known about this through normal civilian rumors and had actually begun distributing them in the army, and even the earmuffs and gloves made of fur in the Jin Dynasty were recognized to be more effective than the linen products of the Song Dynasty...but the Jin army did not have the awareness of unified stockpiling of millions of them.
It wasn't obvious before, but now that the cold wave has arrived, having those things has become a big problem. Although they have countless gold and silver in Yanjing, countless military equipment and armor reserves in Zhending Prefecture, and even a large amount of furs for keeping out the cold in Zhending, they cannot produce large-scale gloves and earmuffs for a while.
The small amount stored can only satisfy the needs of the war soldiers, and even that is not enough for all the soldiers.
In short, it was just small things like this. The Jin army, which was passively fighting, began to rapidly differentiate in its combat effectiveness because of a little thing here and a little thing there.
The elite troops and soldiers can barely maintain their combat effectiveness, but the lower-level auxiliary troops and signed troops are in trouble... However, a war of this scale has already exceeded everyone's original cognition. The auxiliary troops and signed troops have unknowingly become an indispensable part of the war. When the latter cannot play an effective role, the war will also be affected.
The most direct manifestation was on the river front. No matter how hard the Jin army tried, these auxiliary troops and signed troops could not play an effective role in consuming resources. Often the preparation for an offensive would take most of the day. If these signed troops and auxiliary troops could not play an effective role in consuming resources, who would be willing to send large numbers of combat troops to the Song army's defense line full of icicles again?
Therefore, after the cold wave arrived, the Jin army was shocked to find that although their morale was gradually recovering, their speed and ability to organize a large-scale offensive were becoming increasingly difficult.
On the 26th day of the twelfth lunar month, Emperor Zhao began to cut off the Fen River west of Taiyuan City. Although the second large-scale attack of the Jin army did not result in a serious setback like Wang Bolun's, it was not surprising that the Song army held on.
However, from the overall perspective, this result seemed to put the Song army in a more dangerous and embarrassing situation, and also caused the top leaders of the Song army to fall into a certain sense of uneasiness.
"Marshal Yue."
Late at night on the 29th day of the twelfth lunar month, Hu Yin appeared in Yue Fei's tent with a dark face, and stretched out his almost frozen hands next to the brazier, and said directly, "I have something to say."
Yue Fei did not dare to be negligent. He immediately stood up and saluted respectfully, then signaled his attendants and staff to leave together.
As soon as they left, Hu Yin immediately spoke up: "I heard that the Jin Kingdom started to cut off the Yellow River on both sides in the south. Is that true or not?"
"Yes." Yue Fei had no intention of hiding anything. "To let Minister Hu know, the Jin army was frustrated in its attack the day before yesterday, and since yesterday, they have changed their plan and gathered a large number of civilians in the south to try to dig through the east branch of the Yellow River North Road and the west branch of the Yellow River East Road to cut off the two river channels on our side... Because of the huge scale, the scouts only figured out the enemy's intentions early this morning and reported back."
"What do you think?" Hu Yin did not question the other party why he did not tell him in time, but asked directly.
"It's hard to say." Yue Fei sighed. "I'm from Hebei, I know the local hydrology... It's no problem to cut off the river, but the key is that it will cost a lot, and it's almost the New Year, I don't know if it will be done in time... If they can finish it before the thaw, then they can succeed. Otherwise, if the project is not completed and the river has already thawed, then they will be courting death."
"So, this means we have to leave our success or failure to the Jin people?" Hu Yin responded coldly.
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