Chapter 409 Yellow Green
The sudden appearance of a spring thunderstorm not only asserted its authority, but also turned what was supposed to be a large-scale melee between the two armies into a messy battle.
Not to mention that night, the spring rain continued to fall for three consecutive days, turning the plains into mud.
For a time, both armies were in great pain, yet they were wary of each other, and neither side dared to retreat easily.
Among them, the Song army quickly captured Huolu County, and then set up camps along the county. The civilians and soldiers braved the rain to cut wood from the mountains and fields in the rear, dismantle the old camp, transport supplies, and build a new camp. They worked very hard... and the Jin army was not much behind. In order to prevent losing tactical control over that piece of high ground, they also began to move their camps forward in a large number. The camps that were originally evenly distributed around Shiyi were dismantled, and a large number of signed soldiers from the rear also worked in the rain, and set up camps from Shiyi all the way to Huolu County.
Due to the objective fact that both sides had huge military forces, coupled with the necessary auxiliary troops and civilian laborers, the camps of both armies on both sides of the Taiping River appeared to be horrifyingly vast.
The Song army camp, not to mention the scattered horns and rear guards, the latest core camp alone was almost ten times larger than the original Huolu County. The Jin army camp, in order to facilitate the cavalry's support and the movement of advancing into the Taiping River, presented a strange herringbone shape that stretched for 20 to 30 miles... The head was only a few miles away from the Taiping River, one of the two feet was on Shiyi, and the other stretched to a position several miles in front of the Hutuo River, facing the Zhending City logistics base on the other side of the river.
However, it is not just the grassroots civilians who are working hard. These days, soldiers have to patrol the river in the rain for defense, officers are also busy ensuring combat readiness, and senior officials above the commander-in-chief have to make military plans for a full-scale battle that may break out at any time, and even have discussions non-military.
Just as Wu Jie said, both sides have no room for maneuver. Now hundreds of thousands of troops are relying on the Taiping River, which does not even need to be drawn on the map, and the rain for their final escape, and the rain may stop at any time... Under the comprehensive pressure, no one can stay out of it, and no one can escape responsibility and pressure.
Not only that, as the rain continued to fall and the two armies set up camp and approached each other step by step, some other things were also confirmed.
First of all, there was the battle damage that day.
There's actually not much to say about this. It was a terrible battle and the fighting didn't last long. Neither side was able to kill effective casualties. The thousands of casualties were scattered among the various tribes, which was not even as many as the casualties caused by the rain in the past few days... Because they had to set up the camp in the rain, many people caught a cold, and there were also many casualties from slips and falls.
Secondly, the issue of how to deal with Hu Yantong.
This time, there was no doubt that Huyan Tong violated the rough order to set up camp on the river bank and crossed the river to attack without authorization... Logically speaking, military discipline was the most important before a war, and he should have been severely punished... But in fact, not only Han Shizhong protected his subordinates, but also Wu Jie, Li Yanxian, and even Wang Yan, several generals almost unanimously agreed that Huyan Tong should be given a chance to redeem himself.
There were many reasons, and the reason given by Wu Jie, who was in charge of the daily affairs of the camp, was that Emperor Zhao had issued an edict in the past that anyone in the camp who dared to fight would be pardoned even if he was defeated. Moreover, Hu Yantong did not cause huge losses to the headquarters yesterday.
This is very intriguing.
Emperor Zhao, who was worried, did not intend to get upset with several generals over this matter... Therefore, the final result was that Hu Yantong was demoted four levels, fined one year's salary, and still acted as the commander.
Taking into account the two most important privileges of a commander-in-chief, one is to lead troops independently, and the other is to submit secret letters to the emperor, and neither of them has been deprived, then Huyan Tong's treatment is basically the same as lifting him up high and then dropping him lightly.
However, it didn't matter, because on the third day of the spring rain, which was the early morning of the first day of February in the tenth year of Jianyan, Qu Duan and Liu Qi led the remaining imperial cavalry and Zhang Xian and Zhang Zigai to Huolu County.
The Song army was both surprised and delighted by this.
The good news was that Qu Duan brought 16,000 to 17,000 reinforcements, and both the 10,000 imperial cavalry and the two Beiwei troops were the top fighting forces of the Song army. Their timely arrival naturally boosted the morale of the army. But the worrying thing was that the entire western Hebei region had been hit by rain before, and in order to prevent a surprise attack by the Jin army, Qu Duan chose to march along the eastern foot of Taihang Mountain. This caused the reinforcements to encounter various floods and mountain torrents in the past few days, so that when such an elite force arrived at Huolu with great difficulty, they were already exhausted to the extreme, and suffered heavy casualties along the way.
You know, according to Qu Duan, when he separated from Yue Fei in Damingfu, he discussed with Yue Fei, Zhang Rong, and Tian Shizhong, and they all felt that the infantry battalion of the Hebei Front Army might not be able to catch up with the decisive battle. So Yue Fei made temporary and sufficient reinforcements to the three troops that followed the Jin army on horseback... For example, the long-axe heavy infantry Beiwei Army of the Imperial Camp Right Army had a full complement of 4,000 people. After several hard battles in Damingfu, they were killed and injured, and there were only 3,000 soldiers left. However, in order to ensure that this trip north could provide enough support to Emperor Zhao, Yue Fei directly drew out his headquarters and gathered 4,000 people again, and then sent them in the form of mounted infantry.
However, due to the rain three days ago, floods along the way, small groups of troops lost their way, camps collapsed at night, and injuries and illnesses, Zhang Zigai had only 3,000 men left when he arrived at Huolu. Moreover, because a large number of livestock carrying equipment were lost, half of the troops were left unarmed.
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