My younger brother Zhuge Liang

Chapter 340: Focus on one and lose the other
Cao Cao adopted Guo Jia's backup plan and promoted Zang Ba, Sun Guan and Chang Xi to higher positions.

However, since this move is a "backup strategy", it is destined to be held in the back burner for the time being. If the problem can be solved without using this move, try not to use it.

It is because Xiahou Yuan was unable to make any breakthroughs on the front battlefield in the next one or two months, and all other attempts failed, that things have come to this.

What's more, with Xiahou Yuan's unruly temper, he would never admit defeat before fully trying.

……

Time passed quickly and it was late July of the seventh year of Jian'an, more than a month after Xiahou Yuan besieged Ju County, and twenty days after he listened to Guo Jia's strategy and divided his troops to march north to various counties.

Cao Cao's approval of the backup plan and his decree to promote Zang Ba and others finally reached Xiahou Yuan at the front line, which could be regarded as a kind of urging to Xiahou Yuan.

In the past month, Xiahou Yuan's fighting style was completely in line with Guo Jia's plan.

Guo Jia told him to surround but not attack, so he did.
Guo Jia asked him to divide his troops and make a detour, and spread false news to scare Gao Shun, trying to make Gao Shun mistakenly believe that the counties were in danger, thus forcing him to go out of the city to intercept. Xiahou Yuan also worked hard to spread the news.

Unfortunately, both of Guo Jia's strategies were like a drop in the ocean, failing to create any waves.

Gao Shun of Ju County knew that Xiahou Yuan had sent his troops northward to surround the counties, but he remained unmoved and remained in his position to defend himself, making it impossible for Xiahou Yuan to attack.

Xiahou Yuan set up ambushes two or three times. Every ten days or so, a fleet of grain ships would slowly pass upstream on the Shushui River west of Ju County. However, Gao Shun refused to leave the city to intercept the grain, allowing Xiahou Yuan to transport sufficient military rations to the front lines of the siege in various counties and store them.

On the other hand, precisely because Gao Shun was difficult to lure out, the impatient Xiahou Yuan organized several tentative attacks in the direction of Lu Su in the counties, hoping to break the situation.

As a result, they suffered heavy casualties due to Lu Su's well-organized city defense deployment and made no progress.

Moreover, Lu Su's acting skills are better than Gao Shun's. Gao Shun would just defend to the end without any waves from beginning to end, while Xiahou Yuan would stop after he got his head broken and bleeding for the first time.

However, Lu Su was able to display a slightly flexible defense, ensuring that the city defense was intact, giving Xiahou Yuan a glimmer of hope and inducing him to continue his fierce attack, but in the end he always failed and lost more troops than he did at Gao Shun's.

The details are not worth mentioning. In short, the name of "Rao Zijing, the guard on the road" was first used in this time and space. After all, Lu Su had no experience of leading troops and supervising a battle alone before. This was also the first time he accumulated military merits and experience. It was normal that the enemy did not understand his ability.

This situation also made Xiahou Yuan more and more anxious, and his trust in Guo Jia gradually decreased with the passage of time.

So all his dissatisfaction exploded the moment he received Cao Cao's order:
"Mr. Fengxiao, is your plan going to work? The troops have been divided for a month, and Gao Shun is just like a deaf and blind man who only knows how to defend the city! Didn't you say that he would worry about Zhuge Jun's life and death and go out of the city to rob food?

The decree from the Minister of Works to promote Zang Ba and Sun Guan has arrived. If there is no progress in a month or so, we will really have to attack Donghai County under the banner of Zang Ba and ask for a fight! Time waits for no one!

"Forty thousand troops are deep in enemy territory, and they are fighting in the mountains. They can't afford to waste manpower and horses! It's difficult to transport food in the Mengshan Mountains. There are many sections of the river where the water is turbulent and boats need to be pulled by boatmen to pass!"

Guo Jia was accused by Xiahou Yuan, and he had no words to say, so he could only laugh at himself:
"I think this strategy is definitely fine. Perhaps Lu Su is cautious in defending the city and repeatedly warned Gao Shun not to act rashly before the battle.

It may also be that Gao Shun had too much confidence in Lu Su's ability to defend the city and knew that we could not break through it. Our army had never fought against Lu Su before, nor had we heard of his record of leading troops in battle. Who could have thought of such a thing? "

Xiahou Yuan was already a little anxious and had no time to listen to Guo Jia's detailed explanation. He just raised his hand, interrupted the other party and asked:

"It's useless to talk about all this now. Let's just talk about what to do next? For the next month, should we continue to besiege the city and transport food to lure the enemy? Or should we think of another way? Will Gao Shun fall for it?"

Guo Jia gritted his teeth and said, "General, a journey of a hundred miles begins with a single step. It has come to this, so you should just hold on a little longer. Besides, the art of war is about the principle of falsehood and reality, and the most fearful thing is that one truth is mixed in among nine falsehoods."

"We have to transport food every once in a while if we continue to besiege the city. If we relax our guard and don't use ambush troops when transporting food, what if Gao Shun dares to leave the city one day and really intercepts and burns the military food while we are paralyzed? Wouldn't that be a big mistake?"

Xiahou Yuan had no choice but to continue following the old policy and wait for changes.

War is sometimes so boring. There is a long test of patience to see who loses patience first.

……

However, Xiahou Yuan managed to suppress his anger and was willing to patiently hold out and look for flaws, but the enemy suddenly became restless and found ways to provoke him.

Just two days after Guo Jia persuaded him to remain patient, the main battlefield and grain routes along the Shushui River were restored without any problems.

The other detachment sent to the coastal battlefield to occupy and destroy the ports in Langya County, namely the troops of Li Dian and Sun Guan, was suddenly attacked by Liu Bei's army in Rizhao Port, which had been stable for a month. Fortunately, the troops of Li Dian and Sun Guan were deployed relatively dispersedly. The garrison of a large newly built port like Rizhao Port was only two to three thousand people. The other coastal ports were guarded by separate troops, and each place was like pepper, with relatively dispersed troops.

So when one of the points was breached by Liu Bei's army, the casualties were not large, only an army of more than 2,000 people was surrounded and annihilated.

Sun Guan was stationed in Rizhao Port at the time. After being defeated by the surprise attack troops, he mounted his horse and fled with his personal guards. He returned to report the news a day later.

Xiahou Yuan was also shocked when he received the news of defeat, and asked quickly:

"Who launched a surprise attack on Rizhao Town? Where did the enemy come from? Aren't all the ports along the entire Langya coast occupied by our army? The area within a hundred miles on both sides of Rizhao Town is our stronghold. How could it be attacked by the enemy?"

Sun Guan, with wounds on his face, complained miserably: "The enemy came directly from the sea, sailed across in the middle of the night, and suddenly landed in the early morning, setting fire to our camp first, and then attacking us from both sides in a chaotic battle.

None of our troops stationed along the coast and sentinels within a hundred miles north and south of Rizhao Town spotted the enemy fleet! The enemy ships must have come from the distant sea that could not be seen from the shore, and when they sailed near Rizhao, they suddenly turned to the near sea and sailed to the shore in the dark. "

Xiahou Yuan was stunned and felt more and more angry, with nowhere to vent.

For the northerners during the Han Dynasty, the fact that ships could sail on the sea was understandable to them, and the ship technology of the Han Dynasty was not so backward that it was impossible to sail.

However, the northerners' understanding of navigation is limited to "sailing cautiously within the sight of the coastline." It cannot be said that there are no such things as adventurous sailing in the open sea, but they will definitely get lost.

In other words, when the fleet turns back to the coast, they have no idea where they will dock or how far they have sailed. These are all impossible to calculate or measure.

This time, the naval commanders of Liu Bei's side could not only sail blindly without seeing the coastline within at least a hundred miles, but also ensure that when they turned back to the shore in the dark night, they would land near Rizhao Town without alerting the Cao army's beacon towers along the coast in other places. This level of accuracy was beyond Xiahou Yuan's imagination.

It was the first time for the northern generals to encounter such a situation. They were out of information and suffered a severe beating. It could be considered as paying tuition.

Xiahou Yuan's face turned pale, and he gritted his teeth and asked another question: "Who is the enemy's general? You must have found out, right? You don't have to suffer a disastrous defeat without knowing who defeated you! It's a pity that Sikong just promoted you to a lieutenant general!"

Sun Guan quickly replied: "It was the navy led by Zhou Yu, the boy who surrendered to Liu Bei from Sun Ce's army!"

Xiahou Yuan gritted his teeth and said, "Sun Ce has some capable men under his command, but it's a pity that they have been assigned to Liu Bei. Should we ask the Minister of Works to send his newly recruited son-in-law Sun Quan to help dissolve the hearts of these old generals from Jiangdong?"

Guo Jia, who was standing by, quickly tried to persuade him, "I'm afraid this is inappropriate. I heard a while ago that the Zhuge family had married Zhou Yu. Zhou Yu lost his wife in the battle of Jiangdong, so he married Zhuge Jin's second sister.

Now Zhou Yu has been sent by Liu Bei to Langya to help Lu Su and Zhuge Jun. According to my guess, Zhou Yu certainly cannot take his newlywed wife with him on the sea, so his wife should be living with his brother Zhuge Jun in Zhuxian. Zhou Yu's wife is in the hands of the enemy in Langya, how can we win him over? It's useless to bring Sun Quan here. "

After hearing this, Xiahou Yuan thought about it again and again, and had to temporarily give up the idea of relying on Sun Quan to shake the surrendered generals in Jiangdong. He just turned to Guo Jia and asked Guo Jia to come up with some countermeasures:

"Since Sun Quan cannot be relied upon, then tell me, how should we deal with the situation now?"

Guo Jia stroked his goatee and thought for a while, then comforted him, "Don't worry too much about the defeat in Rizhao. Perhaps Zhou Yu is not capable of landing accurately in the dark night and the vast sea.

Maybe he was lucky this time. His original intention was to find a seaport nearby to land, and then quickly fight and wipe out our defenders with superior forces, but he just happened to hit Rizhao Town. If he hadn't hit it accurately and hit somewhere else, at most he would have wiped out hundreds of thousands of our troops.

But Zhou Yu's use of troops in this way also reminds us that we can no longer disperse our defenses along the coast of Langya and give the enemy the opportunity to defeat them one by one. We must gather our forces to ensure that even if Zhou Yu lands safely at any location, he will not be able to swallow up any of us and can delay the friendly forces to come to our rescue.

In this way, we can catch Zhou Yu's troops on the coast and fight a land battle or field battle to weaken Zhou Yu. However, it is still unlikely to annihilate Zhou Yu. Once he finds that he is no match for his opponent, he will still take advantage of the sea ship and board the ship to escape.

At most, we can chase him closely, and when his rear troops have not all boarded the boats, we can attack them halfway across the river and defeat their remaining troops. But one or two such victories will be enough to deter Zhou Yu and make him dare not do these tricks again. "

Xiahou Yuan suffered three consecutive defeats. Although the loss each time was between one or two thousand and two or three thousand, it was still a heavy blow to morale. Xiahou Yuan was already a little neurotic, and his trust in Guo Jia was greatly reduced.

"Is this deployment enough? Can it prevent another sneak attack by Zhou Yu? Can it hold the enemy's navy hostile and fight a field battle on the narrow coastal plain? Mr. Fengxiao, your strategy has failed twice."

Guo Jia gritted his teeth and said: "The previous two times, the enemy's situation was unclear and we couldn't know ourselves or the enemy, so we had to pay a price and slowly test it. It was not a matter of strategy.

If the general does not believe it, he will have to let General Li Dian abandon the coastal ports, burn down all the port facilities completely, and then withdraw, and never leave any troops stationed there again.

That is the safest way, and we will never be ambushed by Zhou Yu again. In this way, we can focus on besieging Gao Shun and Lu Su without being distracted."

(End of this chapter)