Sun Tu never expected that his army would meet a Jurchen army of several hundred people on the official road more than ten miles away from Lingzhou, and an unexpected encounter broke out.
Before, he didn't even plan to march. When it was already dark, but still twenty miles away from Lingzhou, he ordered the army to station down. Because he knew that what he was going to face next was the Jurchens with amazing combat power, and the soldiers must maintain sufficient energy and physical strength to ensure victory.
But after the second update, the situation changed. Before he went to bed, he received a report that there was a fire in Lingzhou City. When he came out of the tent and looked out, he found that the fire was still spreading. This was obviously not a fire in the ordinary sense, but a fire. Someone in the city deliberately set fire to it.
Thinking of the danger Lingzhou was facing at this time, Sun Tu's first thought was that it was such a coincidence that the Jurchens actually chose tonight to launch a raid on Lingzhou City, and judging from the current situation, they had already succeeded and entered. The city was set on fire...
Now it is impossible for Sun Tu to be as stable as Mount Tai and let the whole army rest for one night. After this night, when he leads his army to arrive tomorrow, Lingzhou City may be robbed and killed by the Jurchens! Making a decisive decision, Sun Tu ordered the whole army to set off quickly and headed straight for Lingzhou City.
But as a result, when they traveled a long way and came to the edge of a small village, a group of people came out in the dark. The two parties collided with each other unpreparedly, and then the officers and soldiers It can be seen that their clothes are different, they do not look like ordinary people in the Song Dynasty.
When the soldiers at the front of the team shouted loudly and asked about the identity of the other party, those guys did not say anything and took the lead in launching an offensive. Hundreds of people shouted like wild beasts whose eyes turned red after seeing their prey, waving their weapons to kill them. Come over and kill all the dozens of soldiers in front of you in the blink of an eye.
It was only then that the government and army suddenly woke up and quickly formed a formation to counterattack. The two parties started a head-on confrontation. Although Sun Tu, who was in the middle of the team, had doubts after seeing this situation, he quickly picked up his spirits and ordered the troops from various prefectures and towns who followed him to form a defensive formation, intending to suppress this force, which was obviously far inferior to his own. The enemy troops of unknown origin were all annihilated.
But as the battle progressed, Sun Tu knew that his judgment was wrong. The fighting power of the enemy army with only a few hundred people in front of him was far beyond his imagination. As they continued to charge and kill without fear of death, Next, the officers and soldiers who wanted to encircle them from both sides suffered heavy casualties, and the remaining ones began to hesitate to move forward out of fear. This is not an ordinary bandit soldier, it is clearly the most elite infantry combat army!
It was only then that Sun Tu guessed the exact identity of the other party. They should be the Jurchens he had detected and were about to launch a sneak attack on Lingzhou! However, facing off against the brave and capable Jurchens at night was an impossible task for the soldiers and horses from various prefectures in Shandong who had only received formal training for less than two months.
What makes Sun Tu strange is that since this army is here, who lit the fire in the city? Could it be that these Jurchens were so shrewd that they expected early in the morning that they would lead their troops to rescue Lingzhou, so they set up an ambush on this inevitable road? Or is there something in it
What misunderstanding? The fire in Lingzhou City was not actually caused by the Jurchens. My previous judgment was completely wrong
It was impossible to get answers to these questions for a while. All Sun Tu could do at this time was to keep shouting and issuing orders, so that the scattered troops around him could shrink as quickly as possible, regroup together, and resist the enemy's offensive head-on. However, it is much more difficult to implement this order than the previous order to disperse the armies to encircle and suppress the enemy, because after seeing the continuous fall of Paoze, the morale of the officers and soldiers has been confused, and many people even turned around and ran away in fear. , this gave the Jurchens greater opportunities to continuously tear through the defense lines of the government and army, and gradually entered the center of the government and army, sweeping towards Sun Tu's position.
Compared with the cowardice and fear of death of ordinary soldiers, the performance of those middle and lower-level military attachés was much more heroic. Even if people kept falling around them, they did not show the slightest fear. Some even shouted loudly to meet the enemy's counterattack. I want to use this to stimulate the fighting spirit of my subordinates.
However, the actions of these people did not have much effect. The officers and soldiers who had already lost their courage did not pay attention to their generals at this time, and just wanted to save their lives and escape. And the military attaches do not know how to restrain the behavior of their subordinates and inspire the morale of the troops during war. Naturally, it is impossible to have much effect just by leading by example.
Especially when they faced the Jurchens in a head-on battle, they still couldn't gain any advantage. In just a few encounters, more than a dozen military attachés and captains were killed by the enemy. This made the ordinary soldiers even more frightened. He would retreat and run away, and he no longer had the courage to stop him.
In fact, logically speaking, although the official army of the Song Dynasty is not strong in combat, it will not be in such a situation that it will be defeated at the first touch, especially since the leader of this army is still Sun Tu. Even if they encounter the powerful elite of the Jin Kingdom tonight, they will not be defeated. He died so quickly and so miserably.
However, due to various reasons, this absurd result occurred -
First, this was when the officers and soldiers met the enemy on the road after sleeping for a short while. They were not mentally prepared at all at the time, and their morale was not very high before the war started.
Secondly, head-to-head confrontations in the wild are not what the Song people are good at. The Song army has been able to deal with the Liao army for hundreds of years with victories and defeats. In fact, it relies on the skill of defending the city. But once they lose the city to rely on, the Song people's The combat power will be greatly reduced. This is another reason why Sun Tu immediately sent troops after discovering that there was a change in Lingzhou.
Third, he made a wrong judgment when facing the enemy and failed to take full advantage of his military strength. Instead, he chose to divide his troops and besiege them. If Sun Tu chose to gather his troops frontally and withstand the enemy's fierce attack, even if he was defeated, the morale of the army would not collapse so quickly. After all, when the front, rear, left and right are surrounded by their own robes, the soldiers will be more courageous and their defense will be more stable.
Fourth, and the most critical point, due to the dark night and chaotic scene, the enemy and ourselves were strangled together, making it impossible for them to use the most powerful weapon of the Song Dynasty army - the crossbow.
The night battle already damaged the sight, and now the enemy was completely entangled with his own troops, so that all the troops did not dare to use bows and arrows at will, for fear of hurting their own people, so the combat effectiveness of the officers and soldiers was once again compromised.
The superposition of these many factors resulted in the encounter taking shape less than half an hour after it started.
The result of pouring. In the crazy attack of the Jurchens, the entire official army has been completely torn apart, and they are like a red-hot sharp knife cutting into butter. They are like entering a deserted land, constantly killing and moving forward, directly taking the official army. The army actually planned to completely destroy this Song army of unknown origin in one go!
Seeing the enemy approaching step by step, the soldiers in front did not even have the courage to resist, and almost collapsed. Sun Tu's entire face was so dark that it almost blended into the night.
He had indeed realized his misconduct in command, and had also thought that the Jurchens were far more powerful than the Song Army, but he still found it extremely difficult to accept that such a result would appear in front of him, that his army would actually So vulnerable to such a situation!
In the past, although Sun Tu was dissatisfied with the weak combat power of the Song Dynasty's official army, in his opinion, the army still had some use, and the previous confrontations with those enemies also confirmed his judgment. You must know that the Qingzhou Army he led not only suppressed bandits and bandits in the Song Dynasty, but was also capable of fighting the Jurchens and Liao Army to the end.
But the defeat in front of him today shattered his idea!
He led thousands of troops to come to Lingzhou's aid, but was killed here by a few hundred Jurchens, leaving him unable to fight back. If he hadn't experienced this personally, he would have thought it was a fantasy. More than ten or twenty people beat one person but was killed in turn. Could it be that all the Jurchens were Ip Man, and he could beat ten of them
In fact, in the final analysis, this is the negative result of the Song Dynasty's centuries-old emphasis on culture and suppression of military affairs, and continuous suppression of military generals. For today's people in the Song Dynasty, joining the army is the last choice when they are forced to have no choice. Only when a famine occurs in a certain place and the people's lives can no longer survive, will a large number of young men join the army. As the saying goes, erected The recruiting flag has its own food-eaters.
The court's understanding of the officers and soldiers was that they should have enough to eat and not make trouble. How could the officers and soldiers under such circumstances be determined to fight for the country? When such officers and soldiers faced off against the powerful and fierce Jurchens, all they could do was to flee and retreat, allowing them to kill like pigs and dogs.
From taking the initiative to send troops to attack the powerful enemy Liao State, to being sent troops by the Jin State to attack the capital city of Bianliang, only a few years passed between the two generations of monarchs, both civil and military officials in the dynasty. Such a devastating collapse speed just shows that the Song Dynasty's army was completely rotten at its roots. For the Jin people, they only needed to blow a breath to completely destroy the Song Dynasty. This is what seems to be prosperous today. The grand scene is the true core of the Song Dynasty cooked in flames.
Of course, at this time, Sun Tu had no time to think so far. Looking at the Jurchens who were approaching and killing with ferocious smiles, his hand had already clenched the spear - these guys underestimated him too much, even those in the state capital The army has been defeated, but he absolutely believes in the Qingzhou Army he has trained with his own hands!
At this moment, Sun Tu was really glad that he didn't completely entrust him to the point where he didn't even bring out this last bit of his team. At this time, surrounding Sun Tu, the commander-in-chief of the first army, were three hundred veterans of the Qingzhou Army who stood solemnly and showed no signs of panic despite the collapse of the entire army.
Their eyes were firm, looking straight ahead, their weapons raised straight up, with no intention of taking a step back!