I am Emperor Shizu of Song

Chapter 97 Slightly worse than Xiang Yu

"When did such a fierce general like Shezha appear in the government army? He can come and go freely, as if he were in an empty place!"

"After being disrupted by this guy, the morale of the defenders in the city will surely be greatly boosted. They will be determined to hold on to the death. How can we attack Hangzhou City?"

After Li Tianrun returned to the camp with injuries, he reported to Fang Tianding and Fang Baihua. After listening to the report, the aunt and nephew of the Fang family sighed and felt very indignant, and they felt that the current situation was serious.

Fang Tianding was young and hot-tempered, and had originally intended to strictly enforce military law and punish the soldiers who failed to intercept. However, Li Tianrun had been shot by Han Shizhong, and at least he was injured in the battle, so Fang Tianding was embarrassed to vent his anger.

The aunt and nephew were extremely depressed and thought that the only thing they had to do now was to inform their father as soon as possible, return to the army to speed up the attack, and capture the city at all costs.

……

At the same time, in Hangzhou city.

Zhao Ting, the prefect of Hangzhou, had been on the run for days. The city had been in a state of panic recently, but Fang La's lack of heavy siege weapons and his lack of a desperate attack had allowed him to hold out until now.

Early this morning, Han Shizhong had sent a letter of reinforcements into the city using an arrow. The news quickly spread, boosting the morale of the defenders within a small area. An officer found the letter and immediately delivered it to the several Liangzhe Route commanders still in the city.

Chen Jian, the governor of Liangzhe Road, and Zhao Yue, the inspector of integrity, rushed over upon hearing the news and opened and read Zhao Zicheng's letter together.

These two people were originally said to have lived and died with the city in history. After Fang La broke into the city, they were tortured and forced to surrender, so they refused to surrender and were dismembered by Fang La.

"In all the prefectures Fang La has previously visited, he has presented himself as benevolent and righteous, inducing surrender and accepting rebellion. This will inevitably lead to a shortage of military supplies. Therefore, if he captures Hangzhou, he will do as Qin Wang Zheng did when he surrendered to Qi and broke his promise, starving Qi Wang Jian to death and burning and looting Hangzhou to feed his army.

All the civil and military officials in the city must not be complacent and make mistakes. Just hold on for twenty days, or at most a month, and the imperial reinforcements will arrive..."

The two men first read Zhao Zicheng's overall analysis and found it quite plausible. However, at the same time, they could not come up with any specific strategies for defending the city. While such broad principles might be useful to scholars who understand history, soldiers and civilians might not understand the logic of these historical lessons.

Even if there is propaganda before the war, the soldiers will think that the officials are fooling them. They may even think that the officials are guilty and produce a rebellious effect.

Fortunately, the content of Zhao Zicheng's letter was not limited to these great principles. The two continued to read and found several small tips provided by Zhao Zicheng.

"...If Fang La is truly desperate and relentless in his attacks, making it difficult to hold on, you gentlemen can also take advantage of Hangzhou's former status as the capital of the Wuyue Kingdom and its division into inner and outer cities, and plan ahead to defend the inner city, thereby continuing to buy time.

If Fang La really wants to attack without hesitation, it must be because of a shortage of food. When the outer city becomes difficult to hold, you can gradually withdraw the soldiers and civilians into the inner city. However, when withdrawing, you must ask the soldiers and civilians in the inner city to donate money and property to help the country in times of crisis and to implement strategies.

After Fang La broke through the outer city, as long as he got gold, silk, satin, money, grain and other valuables, his army would inevitably collapse, busy looting, no longer have the will to fight, and only seek to be content with a small fortune. When he wanted to attack the inner city again, the rebels who had already obtained the wealth would be cautious and unwilling to fight to the death.

This way, we can definitely buy time until the imperial reinforcements arrive. And even if the imperial reinforcements don't arrive, as long as Fang La's soldiers are unmotivated and only want to protect the treasure they've already seized, we only need 10,000 or 20,000 elite soldiers to defeat an enemy force of 100,000. This was the same strategy that enabled Xun You to help Cao Cao defeat Yuan Shao and behead Wen Chou at the Battle of Bai Ma in the late Han Dynasty.

Chen Jian and Zhao Yue were both traditional civil servants who did not understand conspiracies and military tactics. After reading Zhao Zicheng's letter, which taught them how to delay time and undermine the enemy's morale, they suddenly felt enlightened.

Can the war still be fought like this?

It turns out that when the outer city is bound to be lost, we can still lead the enemy by orderly planning how to lose the outer city and how to retreat from the inner city?

Both of them had read the vernacular drama of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and of course they knew what the plot of "Beheading Wen Chou" was like.

Wen Chou was once known as a fierce general in Yuan's camp. But when he was chasing Cao Cao, the treasures left behind by Cao Cao disrupted the army formation. Yuan Shao's soldiers were busy grabbing the things, so Cao Cao suddenly turned around and ambushed them, and they were defeated. Wen Chou also died in the chaos.

However, the variant solution provided by Zhao Zicheng today has changed a lot, and it is difficult to see any traces of the original prototype just by looking at the surface.

Chen Jian quickly thought that Cao Cao had used his own military funds back then, and Cao Cao was a dictatorial and decisive person who could do whatever he wanted. But today, how much power could they have in Hangzhou City?
There were indeed some property belonging to the imperial court in the Hangzhou treasury, but it was mainly grain and copper coins, while gold, silk, and other items were mostly owned by the people.

The Liangzhe area has been a place where wealth is stored among the people since ancient times. Moreover, since the Five Dynasties, wars have been ongoing in various parts of the country, but Liangzhe Road has not experienced the calamity of the war of unification. Therefore, the wealth of the people has been accumulated for a long time.

During the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, the Central Plains region experienced at least five changes of dynasties and repeated bloody massacres.

The Ten Kingdoms in the south, the Jianghuai region experienced the succession of regimes from Yang Wu to Southern Tang. Shu experienced the Former and Later Shu, and after Later Shu was conquered by Zhao Kuangyin, the early Song Dynasty relied entirely on the blood of Shu to support its war of unification against the southern separatist princes in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River. Shu was plagued by rebellions, with people like Li Shun and Wang Xiaobo rising and falling one after another.

Needless to say, the Southern Han and Ma Chu states were also destroyed, replaced, or plundered by eunuchs. Only Wuyue was the last to be completely unified and surrender peacefully.

Therefore, the Liangzhe Road was only plagued for a while during the time of Huang Chao. Later, when the Wu Yue Kingdom was established and abolished, there was no war on the mainland. It was this accumulation that led to Zhao Gou crossing the river and setting up his base here.

Chen Jian knew that the key to carrying out Zhao Zicheng's plan was to convince the wealthy to donate money and sacrifice their wealth to support the cause. But how difficult would that be? With so many wealthy households in Hangzhou, whose money should he extort first to implement his plan, and whose to extort later? Wouldn't that lead to inequality rather than scarcity? Wouldn't it actually drive many people to take risks, clinging to Fang La's hopes and ultimately surrendering to him?
He couldn't help but fall into deep thought.

Fortunately, the inspector Zhao Yue did not immediately immerse himself in his imagination, but continued to quickly browse Zhao Zicheng's letter. Zhao Yue soon found the solution to this problem from the following text of Zhao Zicheng.

"Envoy Chen, please take a look. Zhao Suzhou has a detailed plan in the following text: If the outer city cannot be defended, the government can provide refuge for wealthy families in the inner city, requiring them to hand over their property to help defend the city. If they refuse, they will not be allowed to enter the inner city. This method requires officials to set an example in order to convince the public. There are several more detailed suggestions later..."

Chen Jian was still imagining things, but he woke up immediately after hearing this. He looked carefully and found that Zhao Zicheng had already deduced and thought of the things he was worried about in advance.

"I didn't expect Zhao Suzhou to have such a strategy. I've lived forty years and am no better than a nineteen-year-old. It's really a waste of my life." After reading it, Chen Jian sighed in admiration.

"However, this method is ultimately too idealistic. In actual implementation, it is likely to cause problems. Ultimately, we can only do our best and leave the rest to fate."

Chen Jian and Zhao Yue quickly reached a consensus and decided to adjust the city defense plan according to Zhao Zicheng's suggestions.

They were relatively loyal to the court, so at this time, they set an example by taking out their property to help defend the city and distributing all the money and food to the soldiers.

The morale of the defenders in Hangzhou City was temporarily boosted as a result.

……

While Hangzhou City was strengthening its defenses, Fang La himself soon received the news that Han Shizhong was going to a meeting alone on a boat to contact the defenders in Fang La's camp on the front line of Haining Town, fifty miles northwest of the city.

When Fang La heard that the government army reinforcements had contacted the defenders, he was really annoyed for a while.

"These idiots can't even isolate the inside from the outside. This will surely boost the morale of the defenders. There's no other solution except to storm the city or annihilate the reinforcements and drive the defenders into despair."

After Fang La understood this, he found no solution. He summoned his generals for a discussion, and their final conclusion was to "make another desperate attempt to storm Zhao Zicheng's camp to see if they could annihilate this reinforcement. They could then use Zhao Zicheng's head to drive the Hangzhou defenders into despair, letting them know that the reinforcement commander they were expecting had been killed."

If this wave of offensive and decisive battle fails to capture Zhao Zicheng, Fang La will have to change his strategy again.

At that point, he would need to switch to a siege-based, supplemented by offensive tactics in Haining. Within a few days, he would build a long trench and earthen walls to tightly encircle Zhao Zicheng's camp. This way, he could trap Zhao Zicheng with a small force, preventing him from reinforcing Hangzhou. Then, Fang La could free up his main force to return and capture Hangzhou, regardless of the casualties.

The plan is well thought out, and there is no other choice but to execute it this way.

The day after Han Shizhong contacted the Hangzhou garrison, Fang La launched another all-out assault on Zhao Zicheng's camp. The resoluteness of the attack, its frenzied disregard for human life, was the highest point of Fang La's rise to power.

Early in the morning, Fang La sent out an assault force of 30,000 to 40,000 people, and an almost equal number of reserve troops, who stayed in the camp ready to take over at any time.

Zhao Zi on the opposite side said that when he went out to fight this time, he assembled an army of more than 8,000 people, including 2,000 local troops from Suzhou, 2,000 soldiers from Huzhou and Xiuzhou, 4,000 Jiangfang troops from Zhenjiang, and Liu Guangshi's cavalry.

After some attrition wars, the number of soldiers who can actually fight is less than 8,000, but he still publicized the scale of 8,000 internally.

Being suddenly surrounded and attacked by 60,000 to 70,000 rebels (including reserve troops), the officers and soldiers of the government army were naturally a little frightened.

But Zhao Zicheng was very determined. When the battle was about to begin, he did not forget to go to the front line in person, ride his horse to inspect the defense line and boost morale.

"Soldiers! Have I, Zhao Zicheng, ever suffered a defeat since I led you? Fang La's rampage today proves he's at the end of his rope and is about to resort to desperate measures! Even though he has tens of thousands of ragtag troops, they are nothing to be feared! Our camp is well-fortified, yet he insists on storming it, which means he's out of rations!

As long as we hold on, there will be a turning point. Then everyone will naturally be rewarded handsomely. The court will not treat you unfairly! Even if there are some treacherous officials in the court who are trying to hinder us, I, Zhao Zicheng, will not be short of rewards even if I sacrifice my family to help you!
Eight thousand men is a lot! When Xiang Yu started his army in Kuaiji, he only had eight thousand Jiangdong men at first, but he eventually conquered the world!

(End of this chapter)