Chapter 547: Even a Tiger Pouncing on a Rabbit Uses Full Strength

All chapters have been cached for you. Download the APP to view them.

One-tap audiobook listening.

From Xuzhou to Songzhou is roughly three hundred and fifty li.

The Southern Tang imperial guard troops that reached Xuzhou numbered over thirty-three thousand, plus the three thousand men of the Southern Tang Jianwu Army already transferred to Xuzhou earlier.

In addition, there were prefectural and county troops transferred from places like Chuzhou and Haozhou, as well as a small number of local militia, altogether a full forty-five thousand or so.

As for why the Southern Tang had so many prefectural and county troops and local militia in Huainan, this was related to the Southern Tang's defensive policy in Huainan.

Every winter, when the waters of the Huai River, Si River, and other rivers dropped, the Southern Tang government would conscript large numbers of soldiers to guard against the Central Plains court attacking southward while the waters were shallow. They called this method of defense "guarding the shallows."

The main force for guarding the shallows, of course, would not be the imperial guard troops; the main force could only be prefectural and county troops and local militia.

Every winter, at its peak, the Southern Tang would even stockpile more than fifty thousand soldiers in Huainan.

This is also the main reason why later generations online often estimated the Southern Tang's army size at the absurd figure of three to four hundred thousand.

To be sure, this annual guarding of the shallows was an extremely costly passive defense policy in terms of money, manpower, and energy, and its effect was hardly evident.

Because the Southern Tang had been guarding the shallows in Huainan ever since Emperor Liezu, Li Bian, still went by the name Xu Zhigao, and by now more than ten years had passed, yet the Central Plains court had never once attacked the Southern Tang's Huainan during this season.

It looked very much like a waste of money and people's strength, but in fact, guarding the shallows had greatly strengthened the Southern Tang's mobilization capacity in Huainan, and had also greatly strengthened the martial spirit of the Huainan people.

By this time, the people of Huainan, like the people of Huaibei, were fond of riding and archery, hunting was prevalent, and they would readily gather in crowds to practice with spears and staves.

Even Yangzhou, the city of spring blossoms and misty willows in the popular imagination, had been affected. Among the Southern Tang imperial guard troops, there were large numbers of Jianghuai crossbowmen from the vicinity of Yangzhou.

It is hard to say whether, without year after year of guarding the shallows, the Central Plains court would have attacked southward.

In history, Guo Rong was very fortunate, because a little over a year later, the Southern Tang army supervisor of Shouzhou, Wu Tingshao, argued that Huainan had long seen no warfare, that guarding the shallows wasted money and people's strength, and petitioned for it to be stopped.

Li Jing immediately ignored the opposition of the Huainan military officers and directly ordered it stopped.

This Wu Tingshao was a physician, who had been promoted because he cured Feng Yanji's headaches. That Li Jing could heed a medical man's advice on national defense was simply absurd beyond belief.

But Zhang Zhao was not so lucky. At this time, the Southern Tang's guarding of the shallows was still ongoing, so the prefectures south of Xuzhou—Chu, Hao, Si, and others—all had large numbers of prefectural and county troops and local militia gathered.

Then Liu Yanzhen directly requisitioned half of them, to serve both as laborers and, when needed, to take the field and fight a bit.

Thus, at the end of the second month, Liu Yanzhen, Commander-in-Chief of the Southern Tang Northern Front Field Headquarters, led thirty-six thousand Southern Tang imperial guard troops, seven thousand prefectural and county troops, two thousand local militia, and three thousand men of the Wuning Army under Hu Cile—forty-eight thousand troops in all—plus more than twenty thousand accompanying laborers, and proclaimed it a hundred thousand.

From Xuzhou, along the Bian River, banners waving and boats linked bow to stern, they came surging toward Songzhou in grand array.

The Bian River here was not the Tongji Canal, also called the ancient Bian River, but rather a tributary of the Si River, known at this time as the ancient Bian Canal.

The names of this Bian River and the Bian Canal changed back and forth constantly; sometimes the Bian River would gain the character "ancient" and become the ancient Bian Canal, and sometimes the Bian Canal would gain the character "ancient" and become the ancient Bian River.

Not to mention in later generations, even at this very time, the two rivers were often confused by people.

The moment the Bian Canal was mentioned, many people would instinctively assume the Bian River and the Bian Canal were the same river.

So when Liu Yanzhen heard from his subordinate officers that there was a Bian River in Xuzhou connecting to Songzhou, he immediately applied to the Southern Tang court for several hundred boats.

The Bian River he had in mind was the Tongji Canal. This grand canal, dug by Emperor Yang of Sui, had a broad surface, and because it had once needed to carry dragon boats, the water was deep enough for large vessels.

Moreover, since the Tongji Canal was a canal with slow-moving water, the difference between going with or against the current was not great, making it very suitable for transport.

But once they actually left Xuzhou, Liu Yanzhen was dumbfounded. The Bian River before him had a rather narrow surface, the current was not exactly slow, and the water was not deep enough.

Yet when the army set out, all the supplies and fodder had already been loaded onto the boats. Surely they could not change the Jin army's plan now?

If Zhang Zhao were here, he would have considered efficiency, transport capacity, the laborers' stamina, and so on. But how would Liu Yanzhen care about any of that—especially how could he possibly care whether the laborers lived or died?

So a single military order went out, and another ten thousand laborers were conscripted to tow the boats, as the army proceeded upstream according to the original plan.

And as for the sort of men who could thrive around Liu Yanzhen—with a master like him, how could there be any decent souls among his subordinates?

These men would prey on the common people even without Liu Yanzhen's orders; with orders issued, it was even worse!

The personal troops of the Field Headquarters Commander-in-Chief, the moment the army began to move, threw themselves upon the counties around Xuzhou, forcibly dragging off able-bodied men all along the way, raping and plundering as they went, until the people living along the Bian River were stripped bare.

"Damn them all! They've got no skill at fighting, but when it comes to tormenting the common folk, they're mighty impressive!"

Not far from the Bian River, Huang Yingda, Han Tong, and a few others lay prone in a small clump of brush.

A soldier who looked somewhat bookish, but whose hands—the web between thumb and forefinger and the thumb itself—bore thick calluses, was rapidly taking notes.

Hearing Huang Yingda's grumbling, Han Tong grinned, and said somewhat ingratiatingly to this immediate superior and favorite of the Sage:

"Right! All they do is torment the people on our side. Once we reach the Huainan prefectures, we'll clean out everything in that Southern Wu territory in one sweep."

Huang Yingda and the soldier who was writing and sketching rolled their eyes at Han Tong together. Huang Yingda pointed at Han Tong and said to the soldier:

"Feng Jiye, remember this for me. Once we get to Huainan, we must stay far away from this idiot. Don't let his blood spatter on the two of us when he gets beheaded by military law."

This soldier-looking fellow was actually Feng Jiye, the youngest son of Feng Hui, Commander of the Right Shenwu Army.

After father and son had thrashed Meng Shu in Guanzhong, they had rushed without pause to the front lines of the campaign against the Southern Tang.

Feng Jiye looked at the dumbfounded Han Tong and said: "According to Great Zhou military law, if a man holds no rank, a rapist is demoted to shock trooper; a looter gets twenty strokes of the army staff to start, plus a fivefold fine; and a man guilty of both rape and looting gets cut down with a single stroke!"

Han Tong immediately shuddered. He had earned his rank of Wuyi Lang, a junior seventh-rank official, by defecting on the battlefield and personally killing three men of the Khitan Pishi Army.

That was a fine thing to have—it came with privileges like an annual stipend, land grants, school admission, and tax reductions. It would be a great pity to lose it because he could not keep his trousers in check, and as for taking a blade to the neck, he was even less willing.

Still, he could not help muttering a few words: "So we hang our heads on our belts and fight till our bones crack, and we don't get a single sweet reward—what's the point?"

Feng Jiye snorted. "If you want pleasure, spend a dozen coppers and someone will serve you comfortably, as obedient as you could wish.

If you're out of money, fight bravely, kill the enemy, and earn the Sage's reward. You'll store up good karma and enjoy yourself too. What kind of man torments miserable common folk?"

"Right! Young Lord Feng the Seventh speaks true!" Huang Yingda rapped Han Tong hard on the head.

"You're what the Sage calls... uh... insufficient... uh... insufficient political awareness! I, your old man, hereby punish you—this time you lead the men up and strike a wave!"

Han Tong, thoroughly humiliated by the two of them, thought it over and felt he really had been a bit vile. So, having received Huang Yingda's order, he wriggled backward quickly, rear end twisting left and right, and withdrew from the brush.

Huang Yingda had brought out a battalion of cavalry this time. They had left their warhorses far away, and this so-called "strike a wave" was the mission Zhang Zhao had assigned them.

Its main purpose was to test the Southern Tang army's reactions, morale, officers' command ability, soldiers' quality, and equipment and tactics.

A secondary effect was to make them more tense, adding a bit more difficulty to the Southern Tang army's upstream advance.

It had to be said, the Southern Tang's cavalry was truly pathetic. Han Tong led more than two hundred riders to within two or three hundred paces of them before the Southern Tang's roving scouts finally spotted them.

And after spotting Han Tong and his men, the Southern Tang cavalry did not immediately send out an alarm. Instead, seeing that the enemy was few, they came swarming up in a disorderly mob.

Han Tong seized the momentum and mounted up, launching a head-on cavalry charge.

Because the right Yulin Guard personal troops under Han Tong wore uniform cloth-faced iron armor, they armed quickly — by the time the Southern Tang cavalry arrived, they had already finished donning their armor.

Armored cavalry against the Southern Tang's unarmored horsemen — one charge settled it. Of the three or four hundred Southern Tang riders surging forward, several dozen fell, and the rest immediately scattered in chaos.

Han Tong pressed the charge, and over two hundred riders thundered forward with earth-shaking force.

The Southern Tang prefectural and county troops facing them fell into panic. Their officers beat drums and gongs but could not command the soldiers, and could only hold them in place with personal guard enforcers.

Before Han Tong and his men even arrived, the Southern Tang officers had already killed several of their own men.

These prefectural and county troops were basically unarmored — at best wearing ragged scraps of armor — though they had at least formed up, with long spears and rattan shields in place.

Han Tong immediately abandoned the idea of charging the formation. Instead, he kept a hundred riders on alert while the remaining hundred-odd dismounted and began picking off targets with hard bows.

This was the advantage of cloth-faced iron armor: as long as one did not take eight or ten arrows in a single volley, even a man in heavy armor could still draw a hard bow to some degree.

Under their aimed fire, the encircled Southern Tang prefectural and county troops were shot to pieces, men and horses toppling.

Even a Commander leading fifteen hundred prefectural and county troops was struck by an arrow when he came forward to direct them. Had it not been for the iron cap on his head, he would have died on the spot.

With no other options, the Southern Tang army sent out several hundred more cavalry — only for them to be defeated just the same by the hundred riders Han Tong had kept on alert.

And so, on the left bank of the Bian River, several thousand Southern Tang troops were utterly helpless against Han Tong's two hundred-odd men.

It was not until the Divine Might Army — part of the Southern Tang imperial guard sequence — deployed several hundred crossbowmen plus elite armored soldiers that Han Tong began to withdraw.

In the distance, Feng Jiye, who had been observing all along, clapped his hands, tucked the dossier into his robes, and then said excitedly to Huang Yingda:

"Lieutenant General, the last Southern Wu imperial guard unit has appeared. Many crossbowmen, well-equipped armored soldiers, but essentially no cavalry attached.

I estimate that from receiving orders to finishing arming and deploying, they took three quarters of an hour. Quite elite, actually."

Huang Yingda nodded. "Then get that intelligence to the Wangyi Bureau at once. We'll give the bastards a bit more grief."

The so-called Wangyi Bureau was Zhang Zhao's wartime staff headquarters, established according to the Six Secret Teachings on military strategy, with some improvements by Zhang Zhao — its structure was already very close to the general staff system of later eras.

All intelligence obtained about the Southern Tang army was compiled by them, then presented in the form of figures and tables.

This was also one of Zhang Zhao's trump cards. Know the enemy and know yourself — that has always been what I, Sage Zhang, advocate.

Now, under his command, the seasoned tiger that was the Zhou army lay waiting for the bold hyena of the Southern Tang to take the bait.

Related novels: