Chapter 548: No Escape on Wings

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Mengzhu Marsh was a lake that disappeared in later ages, located north of present-day Shangqiu and south of Shan County and Cao County. It was the birthplace of the ancient Youyu tribe and the place where Shang Tang rose to power.

Beyond that, Mengzhu Marsh was one of the great marshes of antiquity, ranked alongside Yunmeng Marsh, connecting eastward to the Si River and westward to Kaifeng.

In the Spring and Autumn period, this one lake alone could supply irrigation water for all the people of Song.

It can be said that Songzhou — the later Shangqiu — became a prosperous part of the Central Plains precisely because of Mengzhu Marsh.

However, from around the Shang dynasty onward, the surface of Mengzhu Marsh had been steadily shrinking, and by this time its circumference was only forty or fifty li.

Although it was already early in the third month, a late spring cold snap had struck this year, and the weather was actually a few degrees colder than in the depths of winter.

The water route from Xuzhou to Songzhou was only a little over three hundred li, but by the time the Southern Tang army reached the vicinity of Mengzhu Marsh, it could already be said to be utterly exhausted.

Because the whole way had been against the current, and Liu Yanzhen had made no preparations, the boats had been hauled entirely by conscripted laborers.

Of the more than thirty thousand conscripted laborers pressed into service, over ten thousand had died of illness, died of exhaustion, or fled, due to the intense physical labor and the wretched food and shelter.

Halfway there — at Dangshan — the march had in fact already become impossible to continue.

Liu Yanzhen, at his wit's end, could only order the soldiers to carry their own armor and gear on their backs.

The moment this order came down, the troops burst into complaints. Moreover, although Liu Yanzhen had a decent reputation, his actual management ability was poor, and his authority had never reached down into the ranks. Large numbers of soldiers simply refused to obey and still left their armor on the boats.

When Liu Yanzhen sent men to inspect, the officers vied to bribe the inspectors, and the whole army fell into a foul, corrupt mess.

The entire journey was a clamor of quarrels, brawls, and bullying, breaking out constantly, and the boats moved even slower.

Liu Yanzhen was helpless. Seeing that even after the order for soldiers to carry their own armor the boats still would not move, he could only have the prefectural and county troops and the local militia also haul the boats, which barely eased the crisis.

Just when everyone thought they could relax a little, they discovered that without the help of the prefectural and county troops and the local militia, the work suddenly piled onto the imperial guard troops had multiplied.

In particular, all along the route, Zhou cavalry had kept compressing the Southern Tang cavalry's scouting space, charging in to strike whenever an opening appeared, leaving the entire Southern Tang army utterly worn out.

Without the help of the prefectural and county troops and the local militia, the Southern Tang imperial guards had to keep sallying out, forming battle lines to drive off the Zhou cavalry — more exhausting than carrying their own armor.

And the prefectural and county troops and local militia, who had borne the grueling work of hauling boats, had by now essentially lost all combat effectiveness under the heavy physical labor and constant attacks.

On the third day of the third month, the battered and exhausted Southern Tang army finally reached Mengzhu Marsh. Er... strictly speaking, only part of the Southern Tang army reached Mengzhu Marsh.

Because this expedition, including the conscripted laborers, still numbered over seventy thousand men, and commanding so many troops on the march was no easy matter.

Never mind seventy thousand able-bodied men plus vast stores of grain and baggage — even seven thousand schoolchildren on a spring outing could easily be turned into a complete mess without considerable ability.

For example, right now Liu Yanzhen had reached Mengzhu Marsh with twenty thousand men and begun unloading supplies from the boats to set up camp, while Zhang Yanhan, commanding the rear guard, was still more than forty li away.

Even more troublesome was that, due to the exhaustion from constant attacks along the way, the Southern Tang cavalry's reconnaissance and screening ability had been severely crippled.

It was not that these cavalrymen from Jiangnan lacked skill. In fact, apart from their mounts being markedly inferior, the Southern Tang cavalry's horsemanship was actually passable, and their archery was superb.

But there was a problem: since ancient times, the south had boats and the north had horses. The riders of Jiangnan had acquired a certain level of skill, but they lacked tradition — lacked commanders capable of training ordinary riders into true cavalry.

This was also why the Southern Tang had to lavish great benefits to win over Hu Cile. This man was only a middling cavalry officer on Zhang Zhao's side, but in the Southern Tang he was an expert in cavalry warfare. Even Hu Wei was a rare talent there.

But Hu Cile had only been in the Southern Tang for a short time and had not won Li Jing's unlimited trust, so the Southern Tang cavalry still lacked proper organization.

In screening the main army, skirmishing as roving riders, and scouting, they relied almost entirely on individual ability and daily habit.

Against opponents of the same level, they could barely cope. Historically, when they met the Later Tang or the Later Zhou, they were routinely beaten badly.

Now, facing Zhang Zhou, whose cavalry was fiercer even than the Khitan, the Southern Tang cavalry had essentially been compressed into mounted infantry, completely losing the role cavalry should play.

As soon as Liu Yanzhen reached the shore of Mengzhu Marsh, before the army was even settled, he immediately had several tables of wine and meat set out, invited three or five officers he found agreeable, and began drinking and singing by the lake.

Since ancient times, drinking and hunting at Mengzhu Marsh had been an elegant pastime. Li Bai, Du Fu, Gao Shi, and other famous men had all loved to hunt here.

As a second-generation scion of power, raised in luxury from childhood, Liu Yanzhen naturally had to hunt here too, to display his refined tastes.

When the wine had him in high spirits, Liu Yanzhen even ignored the returning spring chill, stripped off his clothes, and swam several laps in Mengzhu Marsh, drawing loud cheers from the surrounding officials and officers.

As for setting up camp and such matters, he left it all to his trusted man Cheng Shilang.

But Cheng Shilang was nothing more than a brute with courage and strength — an unlearned, unskilled oaf.

On Zhang Zhao's side, he would at best have ended up as a squad leader in the personal army. How could he possibly have the ability to set up camp and settle more than seventy thousand men?

Yet even with Cheng Shilang's limited ability, he had keenly sensed something wrong: several waves of cavalry had been sent out in succession, but none had returned.

They claimed to be a hundred thousand strong and had brought over ten thousand cavalry, yet at just over fifty li from Songzhou city, they could not even scout out a single piece of news about the city.

At that moment, Zhang Quanyue, the Prefect of Chizhou in the Southern Tang, who had been laboring hard to supervise the boat-hauling, walked in. Without even pausing for formalities, he grabbed Cheng Shilang by the sleeve and said,

"Quickly, come with me to see the Commander-in-Chief. The area around Mengzhu Marsh is as silent as a ghost realm — even the birds and beasts seem to have vanished. I have heard that Mengzhu Marsh used to be full of birds and beasts. This is truly abnormal.

The good farmland of Songzhou is mostly around Mengzhu Marsh, yet not a single farmer can be seen. There must be a trap. It is very possible the Zhou army is waiting all around us."

Cheng Shilang felt a chill of dread at Zhang Quanyue's words. In the past, when he had followed Liu Yanzhen around throwing his weight about, he had thought leading a great army was an easy matter — just shouting orders, plundering, and killing. It had felt glorious.

Only now did Cheng Shilang realize it was not quite so simple.

The two men hurried toward the place where Liu Yanzhen was feasting his officers, but it was already too late.

The journey had utterly exhausted this young lord, raised in luxury since childhood.

After eating and drinking his fill, and after showing off his muscles with a swim in Mengzhu Marsh, he could not hold out until dark and went to sleep.

The Liu family servants, fearing Liu Yanzhen's punishment, absolutely refused to go in and report.

Zhang Quanyue stamped his feet heavily twice and sighed in extreme anxiety.

"No wonder Hu Cile feigned madness and refused to come along. How can we possibly stand against the Zhou iron cavalry like this? These tens of thousands of fine young men will likely never return to Jiangnan."

Indeed, they would never return to Jiangnan. As soon as the Southern Tang army passed the Bianshui stretch north of Yucheng County, the troops Zhang Zhao had hidden south of Shanfu immediately moved out.

Liu Yanzhen had barely even seen what the Zhou army looked like, but Zhang Zhao had already thoroughly figured out the Southern Tang army from top to bottom.

North of Yucheng, on the north bank of the Bianshui, there was a small town called Tucheng. Zhang Zhao had personally led twenty thousand of his personal army and had long been lying in ambush here.

The reason the Southern Tang army, only seventy thousand strong in total, stretched out over dozens of li was simply that there were not enough laborers to haul the boats.

After the vanguard of over twenty thousand reached Mengzhu Marsh, the more than thirty thousand behind were still waiting for the haulers from the front to come back and pull their boats.

From the heights of Tucheng, Zhang Zhao could see thousands of haulers on each bank of the Bianshui, north and south, being driven back and forth to haul the boats.

And the rear guard's boats, loaded with vast stores of grain and supplies, were waiting in the river channel for them to arrive.

What was there to wait for? Twenty-odd li — cavalry could cover that in an instant.

At Zhang Zhao's command, the Left and Right Feathered Forest Guards and more than ten thousand cavalry on the flanks struck out from the north.

Bai Congxin's six thousand horsemen, who had been besieging Songzhou, also charged in from the south bank of the Bian River.

Zhang Yanhan, the Southern Tang rear army's Chief Commander, was completely unprepared, because in recent days the Zhou army's cavalry raids had mostly been carried out by two or three hundred riders at a time, and even five hundred or more had been rare.

The Southern Tang army had therefore worked out some countermeasures: use chevaux-de-frise in abundance, deploy strong bows and heavy crossbows, rely on the boats in the river as fortresses, and draw the soldiers back to the riverbank.

Wherever they were raided, they would contract there, then use cavalry moving along the river to reinforce and pin down the enemy while waiting for the main army to wheel around.

But what came this time was not a few hundred riders — it was close to twenty thousand cavalry. In an instant, dust and smoke rose into the air on both banks of the Bian River, and under the setting sun the sight was especially terrifying.

Although the Southern Tang army had chevaux-de-frise, they could not possibly cover a column stretching more than ten li.

Moreover, the cavalry's first line of attack was not the Southern Tang soldiers moving in formation alongside the boats, but the civilian laborers and prefectural-county troops who had been forced to keep hauling the boats upstream.

These men had long been exhausted to the breaking point. The moment they saw the Zhou cavalry charging at them like a violent storm, someone — no one knew who — let out a wail, and at once they scattered and fled in every direction.

Six or seven thousand laborers, plus an equal number of prefectural-county troops, collapsed before the Zhou cavalry even reached them. Even the Southern Tang imperial guards who had been driving them to work were mixed into the crowd, running wildly.

At that moment, Zhang Yanhan on the boat saw the Zhou cavalry coming and hurriedly ordered the great drum on board beaten as an alarm, and the Southern Tang imperial guards along both banks hastily began to assemble.

Zhang Yanhan feared the soldiers would not dare face the enemy but would instead scramble onto the boats, so he ordered the boats to pull away from the shore.

But in doing so, although the Southern Tang soldiers truly could not get aboard, they also lost all confidence.

Murong Xinzhang's Left Feathered Forest Guard was always the first to reach the battlefield.

The Left Feathered Forest Guard's equipment differed from the Right Feathered Forest Guard's. The Right Feathered Forest Guard consisted more of light-armored mounted skirmishers, while the Left Feathered Forest Guard were half-heavy cavalry — men in iron armor, with horses armored only at the vital points.

This was Zhang Zhao's requirement, because he had discovered that the rivalry between Murong Xinzhang and Li Cunhui had already created estrangement within the Left and Right Feathered Forest Guards, and was even beginning to form factions.

That would not do. So before the great battle at Yanshi, Zhang Zhao carried out a large-scale reshuffling of the officers and equipment of the Left and Right Feathered Forest Guards, and then designed for the two guards this mode of combat in which they complemented each other in major battles.

Therefore, although Murong Xinzhang's Left Feathered Forest Guard arrived first, at two hundred paces they deliberately slowed down, letting the light-armored Right Feathered Forest Guard go up first to harass the enemy.

The Right Feathered Forest Guard did not stop, charging all the way to sixty paces. The Later Tang troops facing them were already in considerable panic, but they had not broken, and some crossbowmen even dared to loose bolts.

Li Cunhui decisively abandoned the idea of charging the formation with light armor. Instead, he wheeled in front of the Southern Tang formation and at the same time poured a great rain of arrows down on the Southern Tang troops' heads.

These Southern Tang soldiers had been ambushed while on the march, so very few of them were wearing armor. Therefore even arrows shot from horseback bows inflicted heavy casualties on them.

At the same time, the Southern Tang army began to shoot back. The ordinary arrows did not matter much, but the occasional crossbow bolts mixed in still posed some threat to the Right Feathered Forest Guard. Warhorses and men kept toppling to the ground, causing a certain amount of disorder.

At that moment, Zhang Yanhan on the boat saw the slight disorder in the Right Feathered Forest Guard and immediately waved his flags, ordering the Southern Tang cavalry that had been hidden within the infantry formation to sally out and strike the Right Feathered Forest Guard in the flank.

You could say he lacked ability, but he could spot this opening. You could say he had ability, but in fact this opening was a fake, designed precisely to lure the Southern Tang cavalry out.

A small gap opened on the flank of the Southern Tang infantry, and two thousand cavalry came pouring out at speed. Li Cunhui immediately directed the Right Feathered Forest Guard into an even more panicked "flight."

Once they had drawn about a hundred paces away from the Southern Tang infantry and lost the protection of the foot soldiers, the Right Feathered Forest Guard executed a beautiful whip-turn and wheeled around.

The Southern Tang cavalry's horses were far inferior to begin with, so they had not been able to close tightly on the Right Feathered Forest Guard. On top of that, they could never have imagined that the Zhou cavalry could complete a turn in such a small radius.

This maneuver was not to be underestimated. While galloping at full speed with pursuers behind them, the entire unit moved as one, their warhorses responding as if they were extensions of their own limbs — turning as a whole the instant the order was given. Ordinary armies could never pull that off.

As a result, the pursuing Southern Tang cavalry immediately crashed head-on into the Right Feathered Forest Guard, which had already turned around.

At the first collision, they discovered just how fearsome the Zhou cavalry were. Damn it — the shafts of these riders' lances could spit fire!

In an instant, there was a sound like firecrackers and flames shot out in all directions. The Southern Tang cavalry were thrown into chaos, men and horses tumbling. They no longer had any thought of pursuit — both men and horses were terrified and turned to flee, many of them crashing straight into one another.

At this moment, Murong Xinzhang's Left Feathered Forest Guard arrived. Most of them were heavy cavalry, and with a thunderbolt strike they cut the Southern Tang cavalry in half at the waist. The enemy immediately scattered in panic, fleeing wildly in every direction.

Then the Right Feathered Forest Guard's mounted skirmishers switched to sabers and simply chased them down, reaping them at will.

In just a little over a quarter of an hour, the Southern Tang imperial guard's two thousand cavalry were utterly shattered.

Li Cunhui led the Right Feathered Forest Guard in pursuit. Murong Xinzhang's Left Feathered Forest Guard did not join the chase, but instead regrouped and, at a distance of eighty paces, attempted another charge at the Southern Tang infantry.

Murong Xinzhang divided one thousand elite riders into two waves, front and rear — two hundred riders in the first wave, eight hundred in the second.

At this, the infantry, who had just watched their cavalry be nearly annihilated, grew even more panicked. When the Left Feathered Forest Guard was at about seventy paces, they loosed their bows and crossbows almost without regard to order.

By the time the cavalry reached thirty or forty paces, the Southern Tang imperial guards' bows and crossbows — especially the crossbows — were almost all still being restrung.

It turned out that in their panic, this great formation of more than six thousand infantry had fired nearly all their crossbow bolts at once. But although dust and smoke rose everywhere on the opposing side, there were only two hundred riders there — the hit rate can be imagined.

Zhang Xiaobiao had a short crossbow bolt stuck in his cloth-faced armor. He vaguely sensed that it had already pierced the armor plates, because his belly felt warm and wet.

But he felt he could still hold on. Taking advantage of the dust and smoke, he led his men in another lateral run in front of the Southern Tang formation, drawing another volley of bows and crossbows from the Southern Tang army.

By now, Zhang Xiaobiao's task was complete. He put his brass whistle to his lips and blew with all his might, and the one hundred sixty or seventy riders still able to move followed him and withdrew.

The Southern Tang soldiers, who were just beginning to feel relief, had no time to cheer. Out of the dust and smoke that had not yet settled, eight hundred elite riders of the Left Feathered Forest Guard had formed into a boar's-head assault formation.

The speed of the Liangzhou folded-ear horses and Ferghana horses beneath them instantly surged to its maximum. Like a bolt of thunder and lightning, they slammed violently into the junction between two Southern Tang battalions.

There was no probing — because the probing was already over.

At this point, the Southern Tang army was still mainly equipped with wooden single-shot crossbows or the Han dynasty's great yellow crossbows — powerful, but slow to recock.

Having just shot at and driven off Zhang Xiaobiao and his men, they had not even had time to recock, and at the same time their physical and mental energy had been heavily drained by the extreme tension.

They did not even manage to loose many arrows at these eight hundred riders. When the cavalry were about to crash into them, the soldiers facing them simply broke.

They desperately shoved toward both sides, and the soldiers on the flanks, not yet knowing what was happening, were knocked staggering in every direction by their own frenzied comrades.

The formation collapsed in an instant. Apart from fleeing in terror, many men were defeated in utter confusion without ever even seeing the enemy.

For a time, such battles were breaking out continuously on both banks of the Bian River. The Southern Tang troops who had assembled by the riverbank, using the great boats as their support, mostly collapsed with a crash after being squeezed and driven back three or four times.

In less than two hours, of the more than twenty thousand Southern Tang troops struck by over ten thousand Zhou iron cavalry, only a small number were still resisting.

Most had thrown away their weapons and were swimming desperately toward the middle of the river, hoping to climb aboard the boats and save their lives.

Unfortunately, although they were generally good swimmers, the Bian River was not wide. And the so-called great boats of this era were nothing like the great ships of later ages, weighing hundreds or thousands of tons. A vessel that could carry a few dozen tons was considered excellent; anything larger could not even float on the Bian River.

The Zhou army stood on the bank, calmly and deliberately shooting with bows and crossbows, while the Southern Tang soldiers floated dead in the water in great numbers. Even the Bian River was quickly dyed red.

Zhang Yanhan had already been frightened out of his wits. He loudly urged the boats to turn around and flee directly downstream.

What did he care anymore about victory or defeat, or about his superiors and comrades who had already reached Mengzhu Marsh? Getting himself away was the only right course.

Unfortunately, at that moment a burst of camel calls rang out. Zhang Zhao had long since placed the Divine Machine Battalion on their line of retreat, and more than a hundred small trebuchets were waiting for Zhang Yanhan.

Downstream, the camel-mounted whirlwind catapults, with their firing parameters already corrected, and a small number of medium trebuchets were ready.

First the nimble camel whirlwind catapults pounded the boatmen until they dared not come up to work the boats. Once the boats slowed, the medium trebuchets smashed them with precision.

On both banks, crossbowmen with divine-arm bows stood at the water's edge picking off anyone on the boats who dared show his head. Before they had fled even two li down the waterway, the Southern Tang boats were battered and broken, their speed falling away.

Zhang Zhao swept his hand, and Du Lun Chixin personally led the Zhou army sailors, short weapons bound to their bodies, leaping bare-chested into small boats and rowing out to midstream, where they used grappling hooks and the like to clamber up onto the Southern Tang ships and fight hand to hand.

Tempered on the Yellow River, and with Li Jianchong's help in recruiting Yellow River fishermen and boatmen, Zhang Zhao at last had more than a thousand men capable of fighting a water battle.

Du Lun Chixin was the first to climb aboard the foremost Southern Tang ship. Wielding a short axe and an iron hammer, he cut down several Southern Tang soldiers who still dared close in around him, and then his men hacked straight through the mast.

They turned this largest ship broadside across the Bian River, directly blocking the passage by which the Southern Tang fleet could flee downstream.

Zhang Zhao was so excited his brows danced. These men and these ships were all precious to him!

For fighting on water, southerners were still the more skilled. Capture them and take them north, then recruit fishermen from both banks of the Yellow River — mix the two together, add these ships, and the future navy would be well on its way!

"Signal Wang Shenqi that he need not prepare the fire ships. Order the men to shout: surrender and you will not be killed."

Zhang Zhao issued a rapid string of orders, then looked at Zhao Yanjin beside him and said, "My son is versed in water warfare. You will review these Southern Tang sailors and officers — any who have even a rough grasp of water warfare may be recruited."

But though the Southern Tang fleet was blocked, the fighting did not end at once. The boat-by-boat search and mopping-up continued almost until dawn.

Zhang Yanhan, commander of the Southern Tang rear army, was killed in the search. Counting the soldiers and laborers on the boats, the entire Southern Tang force of thirty-five thousand was virtually annihilated.

Only a few soldiers with especially good swimming skills escaped by swimming away. More than thirty officers of rank above Chief Supervisor were taken prisoner.

Of the one hundred sixty-odd ships on Zhang Yanhan's side, no more than thirty-odd managed to escape downstream on the Bian River. The rest all became Zhang Zhao's spoils of war.

The boats held countless stores of grain and armor, which greatly eased Zhang Zhao's grain shortage.

Now the rear army was destroyed, and the twenty thousand Southern Tang elite troops were bottled up at Mengzhu Marsh — there was no escape for them now.