Chapter 1238 Dispersion

Chapter 1238 Dispersion

Chapter 1238 Dispersion

Around August 20th, someone spread a rumor that the Liang army had already attacked near Jianye, which immediately caused considerable chaos.

On the 21st, a large number of soldiers and civilians poured out of Jianye City.

They are actually not the first batch.

The first to leave were the scholars who had moved south without official positions, most of whom went to country estates in Danyang, Kuaiji and other places.

Next came the scholars from Jiangdong who had gathered in Jianye. They brought their families and dispersed to Danyang, Kuaiji, Wujun and other places.

The third group is the overseas Chinese and natives who resigned from their official positions. These people are actually the fourth group and are the slowest.

But this group of people was the largest, more than the previous three groups combined. After all, the towns in northern Jiang were still there, and the Liang people only crossed the river on a small scale without establishing a stable base. Jingzhou had not surrendered, and many people still had a fluke mentality. But now it is different. A lot of news has begun to spread from the upper class to the lower class. More and more people know about it, and large-scale panic is inevitable.

The adverse impact of their escape is also very obvious...

At 9 o'clock in the morning, Wang Yanzhi, the chief academician of the West Pavilion of Wang Shu's government, hurried to the East City.

"Father, the people are fleeing in a hurry. Should we stop them? The Liang people haven't even sent out their troops yet, but Jianye is already in this state. What should we do?" Wang Yanzhi glanced at the government office and saw that they were all his trusted colleagues, so he spoke frankly.

Wang Shu coughed violently and said, "There are so many people fleeing, and Jianye's outer wall is a bamboo fence. How can we stop them? Well, now that things have come to this, we should not let them die with us."

Upon hearing this, Wang Yanzhi slumped to the ground as if all his energy had been drained away.

Military commander Yu Fei sighed secretly.

As Wang Shu said, they were all people who stayed and were prepared to die, so why force others to die with them?
What's more, among those who escaped there were also their relatives. There was no need, really no need.

At this point, Yu Fei no longer had the energy to offer any advice. He just wanted to spend his last days quietly, then drink the poisoned wine and leave quietly.

As for what would happen to the Yu family of Kuaiji in the future, he had no control over it. Probably their lives could be saved, but not much of their family property would be left.

After sitting for a while, Wang Yanzhi stood up in a daze and left the yamen.

The sun was shining brightly outside, but he could not feel any warmth at all.

On the street, two ox carts collided with each other, and the goods were scattered all over the ground. But no one, from the driver to the owner, cared about it, and after a few words, they left.

The crowd was dense, one wave after another. Wang Yanzhi had never known that there were so many people in Jianye, but they all looked terrified and hurried.

It's not that no one took the opportunity to cause chaos. However, the 5,000 new soldiers that my father recruited and trained for several months may not be able to fight in the battlefield, but they can deal with these bandits without any problem. Fortunately, there are still officers leading the team to maintain order and suppress the rioters.

The thieves did not give up. They hid in abandoned houses and rummaged through boxes and cabinets looking for valuables. They were delighted every time they found a few pieces of cloth or a bag of rice.

The fleet on the river seemed to have evacuated one after another.

One reason was to go back for the autumn harvest, but the bigger reason was that it was meaningless. What was the point of their blockade on the river? The upstream had collapsed, and the Liang army easily crossed the river. Their efforts downstream were doomed to be in vain.

Wang Yanzhi walked back home in a daze. Looking at his mature and charming wife and his beautiful and innocent daughter, he subconsciously touched the hilt of the sword at his waist...

******
When the empire was about to collapse, the Jin army unexpectedly won a victory.

The four families of Yu, Xu, Ge and Tao joined forces to capture Guzhang County, and the descendants of Zhu and Shi fled in all directions.

In fact, several months ago, the power of these two families had almost collapsed. After all, the county town was so small, and the old house was not even as big as the county town, so how many people could fit in it? Anyway, the vassal farmhands could only live outside and were defeated one by one by the Jin army.

The reason why the county town was not captured until now was mainly because Liu Chao and Zhao Yin's troops did not participate in the war.

There were more than 40,000 people in May and June, but only 30,000 were left last month, and now there are only 24,000 to 25,000. Their morale is extremely low. It's good that no one comes to fight them, but once the Liang army attacks in large numbers, they will have no chance of winning.

Liu Chao and Zhao Yin didn't even dare to lead the army out of the camp for fear that half of the people would run away along the way.

But being confined in the camp was not necessarily safe, because there was always a time to go out. Today, the group of people who went out to collect firewood ran away.

"Brothers, this is goodbye." He looked at the rather sturdy and strong man and bowed, saying, "I am going back to Qiantang, you should make plans early."

"What else are you planning? I'm going back to Huaide." Another man in leather armor took out a bundle from under the ox cart, carefully checked the cakes inside, and saluted with his fists, saying, "See you later."

The burly man waved his hand and said, "Let's not meet. You are from Qiao, and I am from Wu. If we meet in the future, we might fight."

"Why do you say that?"

The big man smiled bitterly and said, "The Jin Dynasty was destroyed by the northerners after all. If the Wu clans rebel in the future and bring in soldiers, I may not be able to help myself. The Liang Dynasty may trust you overseas Chinese more. Maybe one day they will recruit you to suppress the rebellion in Qiantang. I'm leaving. We won't see each other again."

After saying that, he turned and left, followed by seven or eight young men, who were obviously from the same hometown, and he was the leader.

The soldier sighed.

He did have some opinions about the Wu people, but after fighting together for so long, they had more or less formed a friendship, and it would be tragic to meet them in battle again.

After sighing for a while, he also called eight or nine people, each carrying their bags and weapons and leaving. Before leaving, he turned his head to look at the dozen or so people standing there stupidly, and said with a smile: "The ox cart is left to you, take care of yourself."

The setting sun stretched his shadow out.

The dozen or so people who stayed there looked at each other and secretly wondered why they hadn't made preparations in advance.

The two groups of people who left one after another had a lot of dry food hidden in their bags, enough to last for several days, which was obviously saved bit by bit in their daily lives.

As for whether there will be enough dry food for a few days, I don’t care about that anymore. I’ll just run away first.

In fact, those who went out to collect firewood and wood and ran away were relatively few, but those who went to the countryside to collect grain disappeared in entire teams and entire buildings.

On August 23, hundreds of soldiers from the former Left Guard of the Imperial Army chopped off the head of the leader of the building and dumped his body in the wilderness. Then they took the conscripted ox carts and food and headed north to Jianye.

What’s more, as the autumn crops gradually ripened, people kept climbing down from the camp walls every day and disappearing into the night.

When he was hungry, he would draw his knife, go to the fields to cut some millet, wheat, and rice, then fiddle with the food, not caring whether it pricked his throat or not. After wolfing down the food, he would continue on his way.

This trend intensified and soon spread to Yu Tan's troops, whose military appearance and discipline were relatively well maintained. The camps became extremely disorganized, and it looked like their doom was approaching.

******
On the 25th, seeing that it was already a clear and crisp autumn day, the Liang army, which had been ready for battle, divided into three groups and advanced towards Jianye.

The southern army was mainly composed of soldiers from Xuancheng and the recently united Xin'an nobles, as well as the remnants of the Shanyue people, with a number of more than 15,000 people, and they attacked Ningguo directly.

The Northern Army was led by Tang Xiang, the leader of the Silver Spear Army. It had a core force of only a few hundred men. Over 10,000 young men from the overseas Chinese community in the Wuhu area were recruited and they marched along the south bank of the Yangtze River, attacked Yuhu, and then took down Jianye.

The Central Army was the main force and was led by Yang Qin himself.

The core is the main force of the Silver Spear Camp of more than 3,000 people who have already crossed the river, plus hundreds of Di Qiang and a few Xianbei people who are about to become infantry, totaling more than 4,000 people.

Ji sent out another 5,000 troops, so the total force along the way was nearly 10,000, and their target was Guangde, Changcheng, and Yangxian.

The main force of the Jin army was also facing them, and there were quite a lot of them, probably more than 30,000 people now. Moreover, they had built relatively complete fortifications throughout the summer, and the camp was probably almost turned into a city. In theory, it would be a tough battle.

But in reality, this is not necessarily the case. War is all about morale. Without morale, nothing works. With the disunited state of the Jianye court, the outcome of the war may be beyond everyone's expectations.

Before leaving, Yang Qin ordered Sima Chong and a group of captives transferred by Xin'an Prefect Bian Jing to be sent to Jiangbei.

Jiangbei is probably about to start taking action as well.

After a long siege, Xuyi finally couldn't hold on any longer. The soldiers opened the city gates and surrendered, and Liu Zun committed suicide in despair.

Other cities outside Xuyi had already been captured one by one by Su Jun who was heading north, and he joined forces with Beigong Chun, Huan Xuan and others.

In mid-August, the 20,000-strong First and Fifth Battalions of the Yellow Head Army and the 6,000-strong Black Head Middle Battalion, which had been training in Chen County for a long time, had already moved south and stationed in Shouchun. They were now almost arriving in Guangling and were ready to cross the river at any time.

Zhang Shuo himself went to Tangyi to coordinate the overall situation.

There was also news from secondary battlefields outside Jianye.

There were several counties in Ningzhou that were unwilling to surrender, so Zhuge Hui ordered a suppression of them and handed them over to Wang Que'er and Yu Liang, who were stationed in Shuzhong, to deal with the aftermath.

After the main force of its navy had rested, it set out from Penkou and headed straight for Jianye. The 20,000 land forces headed south to Guangzhou, preparing to take over each place one by one. Jiaozhou had already surrendered, but Guangzhou had not, so it was still necessary to send troops to fight it, so as to let the locals know how powerful they were and thus induce them to surrender.

There was a lot of information, very confusing. Yang Qin was too lazy to even read it, and only focused on advancing his troops, trying to rush into Jianye before his colleagues in Jiangbei and monopolize this supreme honor.

At the end of August, the Silver Spear Camp arrived at the city of Guangde. Ge's troops surrendered on the spot and turned around to attack Xu.

Xu's troops were defeated and Guangde was captured without a fight.

Yang Qin did not stop and went straight to Guzhang, beheaded Xuancheng prefect Tao Fu, and killed more than 2,000 bandits.

He stayed here for a while, paid tribute to the souls of the Shi and Zhu clans, and called on the remaining members of the clan to recruit young men, transport food and fodder, and march with him.

Wuxing Shen family was a bit cunning before.

He worked hard to annex the fields and farmhands of the Qian family and other powerful families, but he was not very willing to fight against the Jin army. It was obvious that they were more willing to reap the benefits and intended to preserve their strength.

But at this point, they had to mobilize a large force of 30,000 people to attack Liu Chao and Zhao Yin's troops directly.

At this time, the Southern Army also captured Ningguo and other places. Yang Qin ordered them to go to Linhai to suppress the Tianshi Dao rebellion.

On the second day of September, the Silver Spear Army reached Xianshan, defeated Yu Tan, captured and killed him, then turned north and took Yongshi, which was not far from Jianye.

The speed of the advance and the success of the war can be described in four words: a ripe melon falling on the vine.

(End of this chapter)