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Xu Huai, Wang Bing, Deng Gui, and Lu Xiong tried their best to save the people's hearts of two or three thousand soldiers and civilians trapped in Huaiyuan.

As the bandits in the villages used mountain valleys on the periphery, small and medium-sized villages established strongholds and blocked Huaiyuan, whether it was Wang Bing or Deng Gui, their influence on the clans of the major families who retreated to the fort could only be left to fate.

For the bandit army, although it took more manpower to block Huaiyuan than expected, the slight ripples they caused soon swept the storm of destruction deep into Tongbai Mountain.

The momentum is so great that Xu Huai and Wang Bing could not have completely predicted before.

The troops of the bandits in the villages were indeed restrained in the early stage.

The forts where major clans live together are mainly built on the transition zone extending from the two wings of the Huai River to the main vein of the North and South ridges.

For example, Lutai villages, since they control the arable land resources in the Qiuling Belt, they are easy to defend and difficult to attack.

A large number of troops from the bandits in various villages were restrained by the outside of Huaiyuan, and they were sure that they did not dare to use the elite troops to ate these strong forts.

However, the slight swelled up the poor and strong hearts of the lower class, but it was no longer easy for the clan to suppress it.

For a long time, the contradictions caused by the continuous differentiation within the clan have become difficult to reverse, and at this time it has become a catalyst for the further deterioration of the situation.

However, all this is a sign.

For example, the subtle opposition between Xu and Xu in the Shangfang Village in Lutai Village; for example, after Pan Chenghu occupied Shangliu Village, Han Qi and other young and strong people were easily bewitched and killed by the big families in the village and committed a fame, such as Zhou Jianxiong, Yin Peng, Wu Liangsheng and others could not wait to surrender to the bandits; for example, the controversy over the bloody purge of Zhong from Tieshi Lane and Liushi Lane in Huaiyuan.

As the wind and waves began, hundreds of poor and young men no longer just formed gangs to rush to the bandits.

A considerable number of people, stimulated or induced by Zhong Changqing's bloody purge of Zhongjiazhuang, remembered the long-term hardship of suppression and exploitation. When the coalition forces of the village raised the banner of robbing the wealth and helping the poor and took some small and medium-sized docks, they were willing to join the forefront and become pioneers.

What's more, before the bandits, there were some people who secretly connected up dozens of people, grabbing the powerful people in the clan who were usually domineering, or tying them up or killing them directly, and then opening the gates to welcome the coalition forces of the villages.

Seeing that the storm caused by Hutou Village was gradually getting prairie fire, Lao Yatan, Shuanglong Village, Huang Nifeng and other counterfeit forces all came out of the deep mountains and forests and joined the counterfeit coalition. In just over a month, the thieves expanded rapidly to eight or nine thousand.

With Huaiyuan Street Market as the center, the surrounding small and medium-sized forts fell at a rate of about two or three days, and a large number of refugees were exiled.

The wind rises at the end of the green duckweed, and the waves form among the ripples.

The bandit army failed to completely block Huaiyuan, and Xu Huai and the others could still get information from the outside world in time.

They knew that not only the bandits in Tongbai Mountain had become popular, but the east of Tongbai Mountain lies across the southwest of Huainan West Road and the Huainan Mountains that stretched for thousands of miles, and the large and small thieves were also active.

Xu Huai stood on the newly built Wanglou in Puyuan. The weather was sunny and could see the situation near the four strongholds built by the bandit army seven or eight miles away on the east bank of the Baijian River.

In addition to Hutou Village, there are three thieves including Laoyatan Guo Junzong and Shuanglongzhai Zhou Tian, ​​each occupying the stronghold of a small village. It only reaches the east bank of the Baijian River and gathers two thousand thieves.

Pan Chenghu was afraid of war at first, but his troops were hit hard before, but these days four or five hundred new bandits have been added. Even if they are eliminated and retained the strong, even if they are training troops, it has led to the sermons of Pan Chenghu, Guo Jun, Zhou Tian and other thieves constantly launching tentative attacks on the streets of Heshi during this period.

The street market town camp gradually expanded from the initial sixty people to one hundred and fifty people, limiting the thieves outside the market, but accumulated fifty or sixty casualties.

This number doesn't seem to be much, but there are more than 2,000 military and civilians in Huaiyuan, and only more than 1,000 young and strong men. The town camp and the inspector's military soldiers accumulated more than 100 casualties in the past half month. This proportion is no longer low.

The better now is that the internal materials are relatively sufficient, and the contact with the outside world through Huai River has not been completely cut off. After resistant to the initial panic, the military and civilians in Huaiyuan were not scared by casualties and the large number of thieves and soldiers.

In fact, although the bandit army was crowded with eight or nine thousand men, they were pulled out and covered with heavy scattered areas, they were successively captured by small and medium-sized forts. The bandit army lacked military armor and weapons, food and fodder, and they all depended on seizures, and they did not even have the most basic training and did not have the ability to attack large cities and forts.

In the past few days, the street market has pushed down the outer houses, dug shallow trenches, and piled up low guard walls with broken bricks and broken wood. The defense can be said to be quite simple, but the thief army's several tentative attacks were easily disintegrated by Xu Huai.

Although the Xu family did not directly send troops from Yuhuangling to capture the thieves' army, with the insistence of Xu Wujiang and others, they finally crossed Qingliu River and built a small dock on the north bank before the thieves' army was powerful.

There is a small fort with a radius of more than a hundred steps standing in the North Village of Qingliuxi, which not only blocked the passage of the bandit army to attack Shangliuzhai, Dongzhai, Xiemashan and other places from the north bank of Qingliuxi, but also revealed its edge.

Don’t look at the house Xu Qing’s most poor people, but compared with other clans of major surnames, the family can pull out thousands of tantares of money and grain every year for tribe education, ancestral halls, autumn training, and help the poor. The conflict between the upper and lower houses is not so fierce.

The most important point is that before the situation worsened, Xu Wufu forced several wealthy families in the clan to spend a lot of money and grain to develop Shituling and other places, and also hoarded materials and actively expanded the scale of internal manufacturing.

These all give the young and middle-aged people sufficient work opportunities.

The newly reclaimed fields between Yuhuangling and Shituling also promise to be rented and sold to farmers with few fields without fields to cultivate.

Within the clan, even though Xu Wufu, Xu Wujiang and others have their own scheming, under the current critical situation, the elite backbones of the clan can still unite.

It can be said that before the crisis broke out, Xu successfully carried out full mobilization.

The Xu family has more than 2,000 young and strong people in Yuhuangling. There are seven or eight small and medium-sized villages like Shangliu Village nearby. They can mobilize up to 1,560 young and strong people who have been trained by the village soldiers at a time. In addition to a large amount of grain, they also stocked up a large amount of iron and cooked cowhide before, and secretly expanded the scale of the blacksmith shop in the village in advance, cast and make armor...

If we say that the coalition forces in the villages were not afraid of Xu suddenly coming out of the back of the belly at this time, it was purely self-deception.

Therefore, the defense of Hedong street market seems weak, but with the worries of Yuhuangling, the bandits dare not do their best to attack the street market from the east bank of Baijian River. They could only focus on the west bank, constantly build new strongholds, and push them towards the near side of the military camp little by little.

This is actually the shallow attack and fortification tactics summarized by the Hexi army from many wars against the Dangxiang people over the past hundred years.

To put it bluntly, it is very simple. The Hexi army is in front of the cavalry with absolute advantage in the Dangxiang people, and there are hundreds of miles of sand moraine belts (Gobi Deserts) outside Hexi, making long-distance roundabout combat extremely difficult to achieve and high risks.

In the fight against the Dangxiang people, the Western Army relied more on infantry's short-distance attacks, and used infantry's short-distance control period to quickly build forts and military camps, and expanded their territory little by little.

Lu Xiong used this method to teach the township to cooperate with Xu Huai to resist the bandits on the edge of the street market.

As Cai Ying's planner, Zheng Hui was hiding behind the scenes and causing such a big stir. He used this tactic to advance the military camp from the West Bank to the west bank, which is really a lineage.

This made Xu Huai not feel that time would delay, and the balance of victory would definitely tilt towards them.

More than ten days ago, in order to fulfill his duties as the governor of Tangzhou and the military commander of the military commander, Chen Shi mobilized more than 800 archers and soldiers from the Bianyang County and the state training training wing, and entered Tongbai Mountain from the west entrance of Zouma Road. He fought against the bandit army in Yehuyu outside Yushan Post.

Although the prefectures and counties then sent Xinyi to Wenhan in Huaiyuan, saying that more than 400 thieves were picked up in this battle, the prefectures not only did not continue to attack Yushanyi after the battle, but instead hurriedly withdrew from Tongbai Mountain.

However, the bandit army that besieged Huaiyuan later had many more standard robes, armor and weapons.

From this we can see that Chen Shi hastily sent troops to fight against him, which must have suffered a great loss in front of Yushan Post, but afterwards, he tried every means to cover up the truth of his defeat and whitewash the peace.

In addition to the township soldiers, county archers, inspectors and soldiers, Tangzhou also had a battalion of imperial guards stationed in the Nanyang Basin, and the office of the Strategy and Pacification Envoy was located in Dengzhou, which is located in the Nanyang Basin.

However, more than a month has passed since Zhongjiazhuang was tragically destroyed. The prefectures and counties have also reported to the Lusi many times, but judging from the news feedback from the prefectures and counties, it is only said that the Lusi has reported the bandits in Tongbai Mountain to the court.

Although there are a total of 14,500 troops stationed on the Southwest Road of Jingxi Road and 10,000 troops and horses to call in each state, Wang Bing, Lu Xiong and others are not optimistic about their situation.

Whether it is to raise enemies or Shi Qing’s own dislike, Cai Ying took charge of the Privy Council and would definitely advocate the Southwest Road of Jing to resolve the bandit suppression on its own in the early stage.

This is also very normal.

As the military and political chief of the 34 counties of the eight prefectures, including Tang, Deng, Xiang, Sui, Jin, Fang, Jun, Ying, etc., the military and political affairs broke out in the territory. Gu Fan never tried to use the authority of the Lusi to dispatch troops and generals from various prefectures to suppress the troops and generals, so he directly asked the court to dispatch elite imperial guards from other roads. This strategic compulsory envoy was too easy to get involved, right?

However, with Wang Bing's understanding of Gu Fan, even if he had to take responsibility, he would probably conservatively build a fort at the west entrance of Tongbai Mountain Road to fill in military defense, and limit the bandits' situation to the east of the Nanyang Basin to slowly draw up the situation.

This means that Huaiyuan cannot expect reinforcements to appear in just two or three months.

Two or three months later, there may be no problem for Huaiyuan to support it, but Xu Huai is really not sure whether the situation in Tongbai Mountain will be worse.

Seeing that the bandits became a prairie fire in such a short time also made Xu Huai have a deeper memory of the small passage that suddenly flashed in front of Mopanling a few days ago.

If the historical trajectory does not change, there will be a large number of barbarian enemies invading from the north or west in the near future, and the troops will be at the city but Bian Jing will not defend it, and the emperor will flee south in a hurry. This is not unimaginable to Xu Huai.

In history, it is not uncommon to attack the Central Plains. At the worst, the Central Plains were even ravaged under the iron hoof of the alien race for a hundred years.

What Xu Huai had before was that even if the official fled from Bianjing in a hurry, there would be no fewer guards around him. How arrogant the enemy Chen Zixiao was? Or how many thief troops had he gathered under his command to block the passage from Xinyang to Nanyang?

Xu Huai used to think that if Chen Zixiao and other thieves were in power, their subordinates would be able to gather thousands of troops.

However, what was happening in front of him made Xu Huai understand that he had thought the problem simple before.
Chapter completed!