Northern Dynasties Imperial Industry

On the third day after Zhao Gang and others captured Yiyang City, Li Tai finally led the rear troops to Yiyang.

Zhao Gang, Hou Zhi and other generals led their troops to welcome Li Tai into the city, while Quan Jingxuan led his troops southward to pursue the defeated Xiahou people. Taking advantage of the victory, he attacked Yang Zhong from the north and south, and recaptured the territory held by the Xiahou rebels in one fell swoop. The three passes of Yiyang.

Since Yiyang City was not captured through a brutal siege battle, the city's defense facilities were basically still intact. Li Tai did not need to camp outside the city and could directly enter the city to take a rest.

However, after entering the city, he had no time to sit around and quickly understood the current situation.

Although the former city lord Xia Houqiang fled, it does not mean that the situation in Yiyang has stabilized.

Because this guy sent people to collude with Murong Shaozong as Li Tai expected, and just yesterday, Murong Shaozong sent a general and a thousand elite soldiers to Yiyang for reinforcements together with Xiahou Qiang's envoy.

Zhao Gang pretended to be a supporter and sent men and horses to kill him in the river. However, the enemy cavalry discovered the traces left by the Dongjingzhou men and horses when they were stationed on the north bank of the Huai River. Seeing that the enemy was outnumbered, the reinforcements sent by Zong immediately gave up the rescue and turned back. As for the envoy sent by Xia Houqiang to contact Xuanhu for surrender, they were abandoned on the north bank of the Huai River and captured by Zhao Gang.

When Li Tai heard this, he immediately became interested and immediately ordered the envoy to be brought into the hall for interrogation himself.

The reason why he continued to march eastward and captured Yiyang was essentially because he was afraid of Murong Shaozong. Now he just happened to catch a man who had just returned from Murong Shaozong's army stationed in Xuanhu. Of course, he wanted to find out the latest situation of his army. .

The name of this nominal Yang envoy is Xia Houping. He is in his early thirties and is a descendant of Xia Houqiang. When he was led to the hall, he was still trembling with fear and hesitant to speak.

It wasn't until Li Tai said that if what he told him would help the military that he would be spared his life, Xia Houping became more fluent in his speech. But even so, what Li Tai heard was just a bunch of chatter with little information. As for the situation of Murong Shaozong's power that he was concerned about, there was almost no information.

Thinking about it, this is normal. Even if a person without systematic reconnaissance training enters an enemy city, he can only see that there are so many people and the city is so big. It is difficult to observe and summarize anything of real value.

What's more, Xia Houping is just an envoy sent by external forces. Although he has lived in Xuanhu City for a while, he probably doesn't have access to any important personnel.

After some interrogation and conversation, Li Tai only concluded two pieces of valuable information.

The first is that the reason why Murong Shaozong's reinforcements arrived late is because after Xiahou Ping went to Xuanhu to submit the letter of surrender, Murong Shaozong sent his troops to Yedu to ask for instructions until Yedu approved and issued the letter of surrender. After Xia Houqiang's letter of conferment, Murong Shaozong arranged for Xia Houping to return to Yiyang with the reinforcements. As a result, he wasted the opportunity to fight and was used by Zhao Gang and others to seize the city.

The situation on the battlefield changes rapidly, so as an army commander, you often need to have a certain degree of autonomy to adapt to changes.

However, after Murong Shaozong received the letter of surrender, he had to send someone to Yedu to ask for instructions and obtain permission before he could surrender. It can be seen that although he was left in Henan, his power was greatly reduced.

This can also be extended. In Gao Cheng's opinion, the war in Henan has ended, and there is no need to retain some of Murong Shaozong's wartime powers. Keeping him in Henan is just to use his prestige to frighten Xiaoxiao, rather than appointing him to take advantage of the situation. Nanliang was in chaos and continued to expand its territory southward.

Li Tai didn't know the position of Murong Shaozong staying in Henan before, but after learning about this incident, he also figured out that although Murong Shaozong was fierce, he was now wearing a halter on his head.

Although counting the time, this halter is almost going to be smashed, but it will still take a certain amount of time for such a secret to reach Murong Shaozong.

The second point is that according to Xia Houping's account, although Murong Shaozong's troops were stationed in Xuanhu, they did not do much repair and maintenance of the city itself. The city was a bit disorganized, and some powerful men from Henan and Huaibei led their troops to seek refuge. As a result, because the city was already full of soldiers and civilians, they had to set up temporary camps outside the city.

Murong Shaozong was a famous general in the world, and obviously he would not suffer from such lax military discipline and lax military management. However, since he was stationed in Xuanhu but did not set up a camp, there was only one possibility, that is, he had no intention of staying in Xuanhu for a long time, and there was no need to waste manpower and material resources in this city.

Henan was depleted by long wars and would not be able to support a large army in the short term, while Mianbei was well-armed and made Murong Shaozong surrender to the enemy. Now that the army has entered Xuanhu, but it turns out that there are still no plans to stay for a long time, then the place where Murong Shaozong really wants to go is naturally obvious.

Hou Jing was defeated and fled south. After arriving in Shouyang, he rested for several months. Then he raised his troops brazenly and crossed the river directly into Jiankang. Although they raised troops in Huainan, Huainan was not really devastated by the military disaster for a long time. Hou Jing quickly crossed the Yangtze River, and all the people in Huainan were also attracted to the vicinity of Jiankang.

During the period when Hou Jing's soldiers besieged Taicheng, many prefectures and counties in Huainan submitted surrender orders to the Eastern Wei Dynasty. Even if Hou Jing conquered Taicheng, took power, and refocused his control on all parties in Huainan, even the prefectures and counties he appointed would not be able to surrender. There was also an endless stream of people who surrendered to the Eastern Wei Dynasty.

Zhongli, the important town in Huainan, Shouyang, Hou Jing's hometown, and Hefei not long ago, almost all surrendered to the Eastern Wei Dynasty. Li Tai still needed Yang Zhong, a tiger general, to conquer Handong, but the Eastern Wei Dynasty sent almost no troops, and most of Huainan was already in his pocket.

Of course, this kind of rule, just like the Han East conquered by Li Taiqian, is not reliable in itself. Many states and counties only submitted surrender orders to the Eastern Wei Dynasty, but their guardian generals still remained in power. The Eastern Wei Dynasty only accepted this nominal surrender, and only Only a few special people and places sent troops to receive them.

But in any case, the Huainan area today is completely undefended against the Eastern Wei Dynasty, but there are no strong generals to consolidate the rule of the Eastern Wei Dynasty. Judging from Murong Shaozong's performance, he was undoubtedly very interested in this, but he was still a little hesitant because he had not received formal authorization from Gao Cheng.

Now that Yiyang, the west gate of Huainan, has also been seized by Li Tai, this has further reduced Murong Shaozong's options. Huainan is almost Murong Shaozong's only choice to maintain the current size of his troops and continue to expand his power.

Thinking of this, Li Tai couldn't help but feel lucky that he was more independent than Murong Shaozong. Although the Taiwan government did not give him much assistance, at this stage, it entrusted all military and political affairs in the southeast to the Jingzhou General Administration, allowing him to formulate and execute plans more flexibly, and seize Yiyang before Murong Shaozong.

This also made him gradually feel that in the process of confronting Murong Shaozong, a veteran general, the initiative had begun to favor him. The choices Murong Shaozong can make in the future are gradually limited, which means that he will move forward passively like fate.

After understanding the opponent's situation, Li Tai did not continue to make the next decision. Instead, he took stock of the manpower and material resources he could mobilize at the moment.

He entered Yiyang this time and led 3,000 cavalry. Before that, Zhao Gang led 1,000 elite soldiers over the mountains. Hou Zhi and Quan Jingxuan had nearly 5,000 troops in total. Yang Zhong had Two thousand fine cavalry attacked the three passes of Yiyang.

This attack on Yiyang and the three passes to the south mobilized more than 10,000 troops from various tribes. However, after Yang Zhong and others conquered the three passes, Li Tai was able to mobilize more than these troops, as well as those recruited and captured in Yiyang. There are nearly three thousand people.

Although these troops are not particularly large, they are enough to carry out a large-scale battle in Huainan today.

In addition to the capture of personnel, Zhao Gang also reported to Li Tai other gains after capturing Yiyang City.

Xia Houqiang was appointed as the governor of Sizhou by Liu Zhongli and stayed in Yiyang for more than two months. During this period, he did a lot of exploitation and expropriation, and also collected a considerable amount of property and supplies, most of which were stored in Jincheng.

Zhao Gang and others rushed to Jincheng to defend the city at the beginning of seizing the city. Except for the two warehouses in Luocheng that were looted by the rebels, all the supplies stored in Jincheng were seized and preserved. Among them, there are more than 50,000 shi of food alone, and other supplies are also in considerable quantities.

Li Tai couldn't help but be overjoyed after learning about this situation. What really made him happy was not the value of this batch of supplies itself, but the fact that with this batch of supplies, he no longer needed to worry about it. After mobilizing supplies from the north, the next step of the plan can be started directly in Yiyang.

"Zhao Cheqi's attack on Yiyang City is very brave! It's even rarer for me to gather such a large number of people and things for my use. If Huainan can build something this time, Chai Qi should be the first to do it!"

Li Tai did not hesitate to praise Zhao Gang for creating such a good situation for him, and he was deeply grateful that he got Zhao Gang from Wang Sizheng to come to him at that time, otherwise how could he be so effective now!

Zhao Gang did not respond to the compliment, but asked in a deep voice: "May I ask what the manager is going to do here? Now the new attachment to Handong has not been decided, and the property situation is still weird..."

"Of course I will not ignore the situation in the east of the Han Dynasty. However, the enemy in the east of the Han Dynasty is not in the field, but in the heart. Now the Southern Liang is destroying its own rule. Although there are many clans, they are all unfit for heirs. Their strength has suddenly disappeared, and it is difficult to defend them. The two in the north The country has become strong in the east and weak in the west, and those who are vacillating will inevitably have the desire to flatter the strong and achieve great things.

Li Tai also thought about this very clearly. After hearing Zhao Gang's reminder, he said: "Murong Shaozong is famous among thieves. Now he is still in Runan and has already seduced people to pursue flattery. If he goes to Huainan again, , it will be more beneficial to the thieves everywhere. The only way to kill them is to kill them quickly before they arrive."