Mengzhuze is a lake that has disappeared in later generations. It is located north of today's Shangqiu and south of Shan County and Cao County. It was the birthplace of the Yu tribe in ancient times and the place where Shang Tang flourished.

In addition, Mengzhuze is also an ancient swamp with the same reputation as Yunmengze. It can be connected to Surabaya to the east and Kaifeng to the west.

During the Spring and Autumn Period, Mengzhuze Lake alone could provide irrigation water for the entire Song Dynasty.

It can be said that Songzhou, also known as Shangqiu in later generations, became a prosperous place in the Central Plains because of Meng Zhuze.

However, around the time of the Shang Dynasty, the water surface of Meng Zhuze has been shrinking. By this time, the circumference of the lake was only forty or fifty miles.

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Although it is already early March, there is a late spring cold this year, and the weather is actually a bit colder than in late winter.

There was only a waterway of more than 300 miles from Xuzhou to Songzhou, but by the time the Southern Tang army reached the vicinity of Meng Zhuze, it could be said that they were exhausted.

Because this was a journey upstream, Liu Yanzhen was not prepared, so she relied entirely on civilian men to sail upstream.

More than 30,000 civilians who were recruited from the army died of illness and exhaustion due to high-intensity physical labor and poor food and accommodation conditions, and tens of thousands of them fled.

Halfway to Dangshan Mountain, we actually couldn’t go any further.

Liu Yanzhen had no choice but to let the soldiers carry their own armor and stomach and move forward.

As soon as this order came out, the soldiers and generals immediately complained. In addition, although Liu Yanzhen had a good reputation, his actual management ability was not good, and his prestige was not spread among the soldiers. A large number of soldiers were unwilling to obey the military order at all, and still put the stomach on the boat.

Liu Yanzhen sent people down for inspection, and the generals tried to bribe the inspectors, creating a mess in the army.

Noisy fights, bullying and other things happened from time to time along the way, and the boat moved even slower.

Liu Yanzhen had no choice but to see that after issuing the order for the soldiers to bring their own armor and stomachs, the boats still could not move, so they had no choice but to ask the prefecture and county soldiers and the Tuanjie Township soldiers to also slim down the boats. This barely alleviated the crisis.

When everyone thought they could relax, they discovered that without the support of state and county soldiers and united rural soldiers, the forbidden army suddenly had more work to do.

Especially along the way, the Zhou cavalry kept compressing the exploration space of the Southern Tang cavalry, and would rush in to fight whenever they saw an opportunity, which made the Southern Tang army extremely exhausted.

Without the help of the state and county soldiers and the united rural soldiers, the Imperial Army of the Southern Tang Dynasty could only continue to dispatch, forming formations to drive away the Zhou cavalry, which was even more tiring than their own armor and stomach.

As for the prefecture and county soldiers and the Tuanjie Township soldiers, they undertook the extremely arduous work of fiberlining the boats. They had basically lost their combat effectiveness due to heavy physical labor and constant attacks.

On the third day of March, the Southern Tang Army, which had been bumpy and exhausted along the way, finally arrived at Mengzhuze. Well... strictly speaking, only part of the Southern Tang Army reached Mengzhuze.

Because there were more than 70,000 soldiers and civilians dispatched from the Southern Tang Army this time, it was not an easy task to command such a large army to march.

Not to mention more than 70,000 strong men and a large amount of food and baggage, even 7,000 primary school students on a spring outing, without considerable ability, can easily make a mess.

For example, now, Liu Yanzhen has arrived at Mengzhuze with 20,000 people and has begun to unload the supplies on the boats and set up camp, while Zhang Yanhan, who is in charge of the rear army, is still more than 40 miles away.

What is even more troublesome is that due to the fatigue caused by being attacked along the way, the reconnaissance and shielding capabilities of the Southern Tang cavalry were extremely limited.

This is not to say that the cavalry skills of these cavalrymen from Jiangnan were not good. In fact, apart from the fact that their horses were much inferior, the cavalry skills of the Southern Tang cavalry were actually quite good, and their shooting skills were even more superb.

But there is a problem. Since ancient times, the knights in Jiangnan have certain skills, but they lack inheritance and generals who can train ordinary knights into cavalry.

This is also an important reason why Southern Tang Dynasty wanted to offer a lot of benefits to win over Hu Ci Le. Zhang Zhao could only be regarded as a mid-level cavalry general, but in Southern Tang Dynasty, he was an expert in cavalry warfare. Even the power of Hu Ci was rare in Southern Tang Dynasty.

Talents.

However, the tiger thorns had only been in the Southern Tang Dynasty for a short time, and they did not have unlimited trust from Li Jing, so the Southern Tang cavalry still lacked tactics.

In terms of covering the army, roaming and fighting with dogs, and patrolling and exploring, they basically rely entirely on their personal abilities and daily habits.

If you encounter an opponent of the same level, you can barely cope with it. Historically, when you encountered Hou Tang, you were often beaten violently in the Later Zhou Dynasty.

Now that they encountered Zhang Zhou, whose cavalry was even more powerful than the Khitans, the cavalry of the Southern Tang Dynasty had basically been reduced to mounted infantry, completely losing the role of cavalry.

As soon as Liu Yanzhen arrived at Mengzhu Lake, before the army had settled down, he immediately set up several tables of wine and meat, invited three or five generals he liked from the military camp, and started drinking and singing by the lake.

Drinking and hunting in Meng Zhuze has been an elegant affair since ancient times. Li Bai, Du Fu, Gao Shi and other celebrities like to hunt here.

As the second generation of Quan Dynasty, Liu Yanzhen, who grew up in fine clothes and beautiful clothes, naturally wanted to go hunting here to show off her elegance.

After drinking the wine to the point of high spirits, Liu Yanzhen even ignored the cold weather in spring and took off her clothes and went swimming around Meng Zhuze for several laps, which attracted loud cheers from the surrounding officials and generals.

As for setting up camp and setting up camp, all matters were left to his confidant Cheng Shilang.

But Cheng Shilang is just a reckless man who has no use for courage but no knowledge or skills.

If on Zhang Zhao's side, being a pro-military general is the end, how can he have the ability to set up camp in a stronghold and settle down all 70,000 people?

However, even with Cheng Shilang's ability, he keenly discovered that something was wrong, that is, he sent several waves of cavalry out, but none of them came back.

They claimed to have an army of 100,000 people and brought more than 10,000 cavalry. They arrived only more than fifty miles away from Songzhou City, but they could not even find out any news about Songzhou City.

At this time, Zhang Quanyue, the governor of Chizhou in the Southern Tang Dynasty, who had been working hard to supervise the work of the fiber boat, also came in. Before he had time to greet him, he grabbed Cheng Shilang's sleeve and said.

"Hurry up and go see the capital deployment with a certain person. The surroundings around Meng Zhuze are as quiet as ghosts, and even the birds and beasts seem to have disappeared. A certain family heard that there were many birds and beasts in Meng Zhuze in the past, which is really abnormal.

Most of the fertile fields in Songzhou are around Meng Zhuze, but there is not a single farmer there, so there must be fraud, because the Zhou army is probably waiting for us around here."

Cheng Shilang was touched by Zhang Quanyue's words. When he used to follow Liu Yanzhen everywhere, he felt that commanding an army was just an easy task. It was nothing more than yelling, looting and killing, which was very satisfying.

Only now did Master Cheng feel that it didn't seem to be the case.

The two of them hurried to the place where Liu Yanzhen was giving a banquet to the generals, but it was already too late.

This journey has exhausted Liu Yanzhen, an old man who has lived in fine clothes since childhood.

After he had eaten and drank enough and flexed his muscles for a leisurely swim in Meng Zhuze, he couldn't hold himself back and went to sleep before the sky got dark.

The servants of the Liu family were afraid of Liu Yanzhen's punishment and refused to report it.

Zhang Quanyue stamped his feet twice and sighed anxiously.

"No wonder Hu Ci Le pretends to be crazy and is unwilling to follow. In this way, how can he defeat the Zhou Kingdom's cavalry? These tens of thousands of athletes may never return to Jiangnan again."

It was true that they could not return to the south of the Yangtze River. As soon as the Southern Tang Army crossed the Bianshui River section north of Yucheng County, Zhang Zhao retreated to the hidden army south of Shanfu and immediately dispatched.

Liu Yanzhen had barely seen anything about the Zhou army, but Zhang Zhao had already thoroughly modeled the Southern Tang army from top to bottom.

To the north of Yucheng and on the north bank of Bian River, there is a small city called Tucheng. Zhang Zhao personally led 20,000 troops and had set up an ambush here for a long time.

The reason why the Southern Tang Army only had a total of 70,000 troops but stretched for dozens of miles was because the manpower of the fiber boats was insufficient.

After the more than 20,000 people in the front army arrived at Mengzhuze, the more than 30,000 people in the back were still waiting for the trackers in front to come and track the boats.

From what Zhang Zhao could see from Tucheng, there were thousands of trackers on both sides of the Bian River, being driven back and forth on their boats.

Then the rear army's boats loaded with large amounts of grain and fodder were waiting for their arrival in the river.

What else is there to wait for? More than twenty miles away, the cavalry can arrive in an instant.

Zhang Zhao gave an order, and more than 10,000 cavalry including the Yulin Guards on the left and right attacked from the north.

Bai Congxin's 6,000 cavalry, which had been besieging Songzhou City, also charged from the south of Bian River.

Zhang Yanhan, the commander of the Southern Tang Dynasty's rear army, was not prepared at all, because these days, the Zhou army's cavalry raids were basically based on two or three hundred cavalry, and more than five hundred cavalry were rare.

Therefore, the Southern Tang Army also summed up some methods, that is, using more horses, equipped with strong bows and crossbows, relying on boats in the river as fortresses, and shrinking the soldiers to the riverside.

Wherever they are attacked, they shrink back, and then use the cavalry to support and contain them along the river, waiting for the army to make a detour.

But this time, instead of hundreds of cavalry, there were nearly 20,000 cavalry. Smoke and dust rose into the sky from both sides of Bianshui River for a while, which looked particularly terrifying under the setting sun.

Although the Southern Tang Army had resisting horses, it was impossible to cover the entire team that was more than ten miles long.

Moreover, the first direction of the cavalry's attack was not the soldiers of the Southern Tang Dynasty who formed formations to follow the boats, but the civilians and state and county soldiers who were forced to continue down the boats.

These people had long been exhausted to the extreme. When they saw the Zhou army's cavalry rushing over like a sudden storm, whoever took the lead cried out and immediately ran away.

Six to seven thousand civilians, plus an equal number of state and county soldiers, collapsed before the Zhou army could reach them. Even the soldiers and generals of the Southern Tang Imperial Army who were escorting them to work were mixed in with the crowd and ran around.

At this time, Zhang Yanhan saw the incoming Zhou army on the boat, and quickly ordered people to sound the big drum on the boat as a warning, and the Imperial Army of the Southern Tang Dynasty hurriedly gathered along the river.

Zhang Yanhan was afraid that the soldiers would not dare to fight the enemy but would climb onto the boat, so he ordered the boat to sail away from the shore.

It's just that in this way, the soldiers of the Southern Tang Dynasty really couldn't get on the ship, but they didn't know what to do.

Murong Nobunaga's Zuoyu Linwei was always the first to arrive on the battlefield.

The configuration of the left feather forest guard is different from that of the right feather forest guard. The right feather forest guard is more of a hussar with light armor, while the left feather forest guard is a semi-heavy cavalry wearing iron armor and the horse is only armored on key parts.

This was requested by Zhang Zhao, because he found that the competition between Murong Nobunaga and Li Cunhui had created a gap between the left and right Yulin Guards, and even started to form factions.

This didn't work, so before the Yanshi War, Zhang Zhao made extensive adjustments to the officers and configurations of the left and right Yulin Guards, and then designed a combat mode for the two guards to complement each other during the war.

Therefore, although Murong Nobunaga's left-wing forest guard arrived first, they took the initiative to slow down when they were two hundred steps away, allowing the light-armored right-wing forest guard to go up first and harass them.

Lin Wei, who was on the right wing, rushed forward without stopping and rushed to the sixty-step mark. The Hou Tang army in front of them was already in a panic, but it did not collapse. There were even crossbowmen who dared to make mistakes.

Li Cunhui decisively gave up charging into the formation with light armor, but instead made a detour in front of the Southern Tang Army's formation, and at the same time poured a large amount of arrow rain onto the Southern Tang Army's head.

These Southern Tang troops were raided while on their way, so not many of them wore armor at all. Therefore, even if the arrows shot from their horse bows were missed, the damage they would do to them would be great.

At the same time, the Southern Tang Army also began to fight back. Bows and arrows didn't matter, but occasionally they were mixed with crossbow arrows, which still posed a threat to the right feather forest guard. War horses or people kept falling to the ground, causing a certain amount of chaos.

At this time, Zhang Yanhan saw the slight confusion of the Lin Guards on the right wing on the boat, and immediately waved the flag and ordered the Southern Tang cavalry who had been hiding in the infantry formation to attack and attack the Lin Guards on the right wing.

You say he is incompetent, but he can see this flaw, so you say he is capable. In fact, this flaw is fake, just to lure out the Southern Tang cavalry.

A small opening opened on the side of the infantry of the Southern Tang Dynasty, and two thousand cavalrymen quickly drove out. Li Cunhui immediately commanded the Lin Guards on the right to run away in an even more embarrassing manner.

After they were about a hundred steps away from the infantry of the Southern Tang Dynasty and lost the protection of the infantry, the right feather Lin Wei immediately made a beautiful flick and turned the corner.
To be continued...