Please ask me to be the emperor

Han Xu, the former chief minister of the Ming Dynasty cabinet, is now over seventy years old. His beard and hair are all white. He wears a dust-proof warm hat, a straight-seam wide shirt, a soap silk ribbon around his waist, and well-made leather boots. He looks like a wealthy man. appearance.

He looked at the flags standing outside the city and the dark crowd, his face expressionless.

"Master Han, can you withstand this?" General Zheng Jiadong couldn't help but ask when he saw many "thieves" outside the city.

"If you can't stop it, you have to stop it! Since ancient times, the Han Dynasty has always been at odds with thieves, and the king's business has not been peaceful. How can I, the dignified official of the imperial court, surrender the thieves?" Han Xu couldn't help but scolded after hearing this.

Seventy years in life are rare!

Although the old man was already in his seventies, he was still energetic and his eyes were as bright as lightning.

Under his gaze, Zheng Jiadong felt as if his little thoughts were exposed to the sun, with nothing to hide.

"My lord is joking. With your lord here to command, who dares not to die?" Zheng Jiadong said with some fear.

"Nowadays, the 'thieves' are very powerful, and many soldiers and men are afraid. I wonder what strategy you have, so that I can give my brothers some confidence."

"There is no other way but to keep an eye on your ears!" He Fu, the governor of Puzhou, responded.

"Previously, when I served in Song County, I once faced off against the 'thief chief'. He is cunning and likes to deceive the city the most. Please be careful with him, Prime Minister Han!"

He and Liu Jiangyue had previously defeated the "invading general" Li Zicheng and others many times, and they thought they knew the enemy.

As a result, Zhang Shun later tricked him into opening the city gate, leaving He Fu still frightened to this day.

"It doesn't matter." Han Xu shook his head when he heard this and said, "In that case, how about letting the prefect He lead more than a hundred people to be responsible for detecting rape and patrolling in the city?"

"Your Majesty, take your orders!" He Fu quickly responded respectfully upon hearing this.

Han Xu then smiled and said: "Puzhou City has been repaired by the governor. It is impregnable. As long as I and others work together, even if the 'thieves' have a million troops to suppress the territory, what will happen!"

Not to mention how conceited Han Xu was, he did not know that the Puzhou City, which he thought was strong, was just a bigger stumbling block on the way forward for the rebels.

It is said that since Sun Shoufa captured Pubanjin, Zhaowu general Cao Wenzhao, Cao Dingjiao, "Huaguansuo" Wang Guangen and others quickly crossed the Yellow River.

However, after Cao Wenzhao, Cao Dingjiao and Wang Guangen crossed the river, they did not want to fight. Instead, they went up the Sushui River, captured the Linjin and Yi clans, and went straight to Wenxi.

At the same time, the left wing, led by right commander Zhang Fengyi, crossed Yumendu, captured Hequ and Jishan, and headed straight for Jiangzhou.

The right wing, led by the left commander Yu Chongxiao, crossed Fenglingdu, captured Ruicheng and Pinglu, and then crossed Zhongtiao Mountain and attacked Jiezhou.

Ma Jinzhong, who was stationed in Yuanqu County, also moved westward at the right time and captured Xia County and Jiang County respectively.

After Li Xin, the left commander of the Southern Route Army, entered Zezhou and was blocked by Luzhou, he turned westward and divided his forces to attack Yangcheng and Qinshui counties and rush to drive Yueyang.

In just a few days, wherever the rebel troops moved, the Ming army was invincible.

For a time, 70% of the city in the Linfen Basin, the most prosperous city in the east of Hedong, fell into the hands of the rebels.

This is the "strategy to capture all of Shanxi" formulated by Zhang Shun based on the "large-depth combat theory" in his previous life.

The "Great Depth Operation Theory" was proposed by Zhang Shun's predecessor, Soviet Marshal M. N. Tukhachevsky, and was formed through the bloody practice of the Soviet army in World War II.

It is quite similar to the "Blitzkrieg" that invaded Germany at that time, but it is also very different.

When the "Great Depth Operations Theory" was founded, it was intended to eliminate the enemy through a series of consecutive battles. Its essence was to start preparing for the next battle while implementing the previous battle.

It is a battle that combines a series of battles to form a "combination boxing" situation.

In order to achieve this goal, he formed a "large depth" system with three dimensions of "wide front, large depth, and high speed" in terms of depth, breadth, and speed, so it was called the "large depth combat theory."

From an offensive and defensive perspective, it includes two aspects: "great depth offense" and "great depth defense".

In terms of implementation, it includes "Breakthrough Group" and "Mobile Group".

Due to the technical limitations of this era, it is impossible for the rebels to achieve the battlefield width of three to four hundred kilometers and the battlefield depth of two hundred kilometers like that of the former Soviet Union.

But Zhang Shunli could not resist using the infantry, cavalry and artillery groups of this era to form his own "large-depth combat plan."

Specific to this battle plan, Zhang Shun divided his army into five aspects: "Breakthrough Group", "Mobile Group", "Elimination Group", "Support Group" and "Governance Group".

Among them, the forward Cao Wenzhao, the left-wing Zhang Fengyi, and the right-wing Yu Chongxiao are the strategic "breakthrough group" of the rebel army, while the main force led by Zhang Shun is the "mobile group" and the "elimination group", and the southern route army Li Xin's department is the strategic "support" of the rebel army. group".

As for the "governance group", Zhang Shun planned to take over the occupied areas and form a preliminary governance structure, headed by Sun Chuanting and supplemented by officials demoted from Shanxi.

The most critical of these are the "Breakthrough Group", "Mobile Group" and "Elimination Group".

In addition to the overall division of the rebels, the "Breakthrough Group" itself is also divided into three parts: breakthrough, maneuver and extraction.

Taking the forward Cao Wenzhao's troops as an example, Sun Shoufa's battalion, which was responsible for the surprise attack on Pubanjin, was responsible for the breakthrough mission, while Cao Wenzhao, Cao Dingjiao, and Wang Guangen's troops were responsible for the follow-up mobile missions.

The vanguard Cao Wenzhao's troops were responsible for the task of exterminating the mobile artillery, which was mainly composed of the rebel "golden cannon" and "field artillery".

Therefore, the rebel attack rhythm is to make a breakthrough, and then mobile forces swarm forward. If they encounter a difficult enemy, this will leave the follow-up field artillery force with slower maneuvers.

If the subsequent mobile artillery cannot conquer it, it will be handed over to the "Mobile Group" and "Abolition Group" led by Zhang Shun to deal with it.

If the forces led by Zhang Shun are still unable to remove the enemy's stronghold in a short time, they can even take advantage of the rebel army's large number of soldiers and generals to encircle them without attacking, and wait until the battle situation is decided before making further calculations.

But today's Puzhou City is exactly what the rebels originally envisioned as a "nail house" and cannot be evacuated immediately, so they let Sun Shoufa's troops besiege it and wait for Zhang Shun's main force to arrive before making further calculations.

Of course, Zhang Shun would not let them wait too long.

At the same time that Sun Shoufa's troops captured Pubanjin, Zhang Shun had already boarded the boat and sailed down the river from Xi'an City and entered the Yellow River through Sanhekou.

At this moment, Zhang Shunzheng stood on the bow of the ship and showed off to Song Xiance and Sun Chuanting beside him: "Large depth operations are completely different from blitzkrieg."

"The latter's elite soldiers hide but wait for the opportunity to rise up and attack suddenly, just like lightning, so it is called 'blitzkrieg'."

"As the saying goes: At the end of the powerful crossbow, the force cannot penetrate Lu Zhi. When the old soldiers of his division are tired, they will be captured by the enemy sooner or later. This is the policy of a small country!"

"And I am very deep, hundreds of miles across. If the enemy cannot defend me, I will tear open the defense line and go straight into the enemy's territory for hundreds of miles. Who can defend it?"

Zhang Shun's eloquent talk didn't mean anything to Song Xiance. On the contrary, Sun Chuanting trembled and was frightened when he heard it.

As the former governor of Shanxi, he had already formulated a detailed plan to defend against the rebels.

However, now that I heard Zhang Shun's battle plan, I realized that the solid defense line I had originally envisioned was just like paper.

In this era, many generals still only think about point-to-point combat. If they go a step further and learn to outflank and deploy front lines of attack and defense, they will already be the qualifications of a famous general.

If we go one step further and consider the front, second and rear lines, it is often the result of the blood and tears of one or two generations.

However, none of these have any effect in front of Zhang Shun today.

As long as the battle line is wide enough, he can use this theory to break through at multiple points, and then tear the battle line apart, leaving you with no time to deploy the next line of defense.

In an instant, Sun Chuanting suddenly realized how terrifying Zhang Shun was.

He always thought that the rebel army was divided into three groups to reduce Zhang Shun's command pressure.

After all, since ancient times, it has been quite rare for someone to command a hundred thousand soldiers and horses. Unexpectedly, "King Shun" suddenly jumped from commanding tens of thousands of soldiers to commanding an army of two hundred thousand.

That's right, Sun Chuanting then realized that the Hong Chengchou Department of the Southern Route Army was actually under the command of Zhang Shun.

This battle was "big and deep" from the beginning. The first battle started in Kaifeng Mansion, the second battle started in Huaiqing Mansion, and the third battle started in Hedong.

The three battles were linked to each other, in order to take advantage of the numerical superiority of the rebels, and launched interconnected battles from a wide front of hundreds of miles.

The Battle of Kaifeng was to mobilize the Ming army and create conditions for the Battle of Huaiqing Mansion;

The Battle of Huaiqing Mansion was also to mobilize the Ming army and create conditions for the Hedong Campaign.

In addition to creating conditions for other battles, these three battles themselves are also of great significance.

In a word, from Kaifeng Prefecture to Huaiqing Prefecture, then to Fenglingdu, Pubanjin and Yumendu, this battlefield of more than a thousand miles is regarded by many people as three wars, but in fact it is still one. A war.

And this is just the beginning of a war. Sun Chuanting neither dares to think nor can he think about how much wider the battlefield will be and how deep the battlefield will be invaded in the future.

This man has been sent down from heaven. Perhaps it is time for this great Ming Dynasty to die!