At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty

But luck is also a kind of strength.

Leading their respective cavalry to defeat Yuan Shu's cavalry, Zhao Yun and Guo Lie began to outflank Yuan Shu's rear from the two wings according to the established plan.

After Guo Peng learned of the situation, he immediately ordered Cheng Lian and Hou Cheng to lead a cavalry to join Zhao Yun and Guo Lie's formation, follow their command, cooperate to outflank Yuan Shu's rear, and harass the opponent's rear with classic cavalry and shooting tactics. .

Without the protection of the cavalry, Yuan Shu's army basically only consisted of infantry. Under such circumstances, without the mobile troops, one can imagine their situation.

There is no other way but to form a team to protect yourself and be a turtle.

As long as the opponent's cavalry is defeated, they will lose the cover when they retreat, and once they lose order, they will face a bloody situation.

So at this time, Lu Mian, who noticed the fact that his army could not defeat Guo Peng, immediately urged Yuan Shu to lead the elite to retreat.

He said that he was willing to stay and command the army to serve as the rear for Yuan Shu and buy time for Yuan Shu to retreat safely.

"The bandit Guo is strong and already has the upper hand. Our cavalry is broken. If this continues, the retreat will be cut off and we will be attacked from both sides. It will be a big disaster. Before that, please lead the elite to retreat immediately. Your Majesty's Queen, protect Your Majesty and retreat!"

Yuan Shu was furious and refused to listen at all, forcing the whole army to move forward.

"Our army cannot be defeated! The soldiers of the Son of Heaven cannot retreat! If Gu retreats, he will be truly defeated! Go forward! Go forward for Gu!!"

But how do they move forward?

The defeated Chen army's former army had already begun to disintegrate, and the generals of the various armies had difficulty controlling the situation. The defeated soldiers who had completely destroyed their formation and had to scatter for their lives turned around and ran away.

Behind them, Guo Peng's army moved forward step by step, still maintaining an orderly formation to pursue, which made the deserters even more flustered.

Their frenzy of disintegration destroyed the army behind them, and the atmosphere of panic and the behavior of the collision made the Chinese army terrified.

Since the first person fled with them, this large-scale collapse could not be stopped at all.

The larger the number of troops, the more difficult it is to control not only in victory, but also in defeat.

And too many people is really not necessarily a good thing, especially when most people are rabble.

Yuan Shu made almost all the mistakes he could make, and still refused to admit his defeat. Seeing that the wave of army defeat was gradually spreading from the front line to where he was, he even ordered the elite emperor's personal guards to draw their bows and arrows Shoot the rout.

Not only that, but also massacre the defeated soldiers in formation and force them to go back to fight.

Compared with the brutal Guo Jun, they seem to feel that their colleagues are better at dealing with it.

So they wrestled with the emperor's personal guards, and quickly broke through the defense line of the emperor's personal guards, and continued to flee backwards.

"Stop it! Stop it! Stop it all! Go back and fight! After victory, you will be exempt from tax for six years! Seven years! Eight years! Ten years!! Go back and fight!!"

Yuan Shu shouted hoarsely, drew his sword and pointed forward, screaming desperately, trying to influence the overall situation with his will.

But it doesn't seem to work.

No matter how you compare the death that is close at hand and the tax exemption that is far away, you will not draw another conclusion.

Once the frenzy of disintegration started, it was impossible to contain it, let alone Guo Peng's army was fully suppressed and massacred.

In order to expand the results of the battle, Guo Peng sent all the cavalry to chase down the rout and block the road, hoping to capture Yuan Shu alive in one fell swoop, and the infantry also pressed forward one after another. Those who killed the enemy and captured the prisoners all wanted to gain some benefits.

Zhao Rui, Zhu Ling, Jiang Qi, Ma Yan, Xia Zhao, Cao Xiu, Li Dian, Li Zheng and other generals led their subordinates to follow Guo Peng's order to hunt down the enemy and deal a fatal blow to the enemy. , and earn some credit for myself.

And so the victory came.

Chapter 414 Lu Mian, who is in constant panic all day long (editing)

The first contribution undoubtedly belonged to the general who attacked first, but after the meat was eaten by them, it was not difficult for the others to drink the broth after all.

After all, this piece of meat is too big and too fat, and the soup cooked is enough for many people to enjoy, and even the meat can feed many people.

The victory is a foregone conclusion, the morale of the army is high, and everyone has conscious or unconscious excitement on their faces, as if they have seen a bright future that belongs to everyone and to themselves.

Guo Peng swings his sword forward, and countless warriors bravely move forward in the direction he guides, beheading the enemy, beheading them, gaining meritorious service, and then making contributions and reaching the pinnacle of life.

From this moment on, Guo Peng's dominance of the world has become irreversible.

On November 29 of the second year of Xingping, Guo Peng, the general who conquered the North, led a crusade army of [-] to defeat the [-] troops led by the puppet Chen Emperor Yuan Shu near Qi County in Peiguo.

Beheaded [-], captured more than [-] rout soldiers, more than [-] auxiliary soldiers and civilian husbands were captured, and less than [-] rout soldiers were able to escape successfully.

All of Chen Jun's ordnance and supplies were seized by Guo Peng, and the piles of supplies looked very gratifying.

Yuan Shu was not caught in the end, and successfully retreated under the desperate protection of the emperor's personal guards and the general Lu Mian, but for this he paid the tragic consequences of almost annihilation of the entire army and the death of several important generals.

Zhang Xun, the puppet Chen cavalry general, led the army to serve as the rear of Yuan Shu's palace, but was flanked by Yu Jin and Zhang He, and died in battle, and the credit was shared equally by the two.

Yu Jin was promoted to Zhonglang General of Zhongwu, and Zhang He was promoted to General of Jianwu Zhonglang.

The puppet general of Chen Wei, Ji Ling, was rescued after being shot in one eye, and Cao Xing, who shot him, was rewarded by Guo Peng and promoted to Colonel Yingyang.

The puppet generals Li Feng, the left general Lejiu, and the right general Liang Gang died in battle, and the former general Qiao Rui escaped after being injured.

Cao Xiu and Cao Chun teamed up to kill Liang Gang and shared the credit equally. Cao Xiu was promoted to Captain Jiande, and Cao Chun was promoted to General of Dispute Zhonglang.

After that, Zhu Ling led his army to surround Liang Gang, forcing Liang Gang to die in battle.

Le was killed by Guo Lie. After the war, Guo Lie was promoted to the general of the town army.

Later, when Guo Peng was rectifying the army and cleaning the battlefield, he sent Xia Houyuan, the captain of Polu, to lead an army of [-] south to pursue Yuan Shu.

Xia Houyuan led his army to chase all the way, and when they reached Longkang County, they easily took down Longkang County, forcing Yuan Shu to continue southward and cross the Huaihe River to escape back to Shouchun.

Fortunately, Lu Mian set fire to the bridges and ships, making it impossible for Xia Houyuan to cross the river, which stopped the momentum of pursuing troops.

When Yuan Shu and Lu Mian fled back to Shouchun together, there were only hundreds of soldiers following them.

After this battle, Yuan Shu lost all the land north of the Huaihe River, and retreated to Shouchun, not to mention losing all his vigor. He also lost all his troops, lost all his capital, and was devastated.

After that, he could no longer confront Guo Peng head-on.

Guo Peng captured 10,000+ people in the first battle, and the harvest was extremely huge. He directly ate Yuan Shu's main force, making it impossible for Yuan Shu to make a comeback.

The vitality of his directly-administered land has been beaten by him, and there is nothing left.

However, for Guo Peng, it was not easy. With such a large amount of seizures and such a large number of captives, it was still difficult to digest them all. Opinions were relatively unified on how to deal with this huge number of captives.

Receive it, use it for yourself, take out food and give them a full meal to make them settle down.

Some people think that this should not be done, it is a waste of food for the army, but Guo Peng does not think so.

"They are all Li Shu who were forcibly conscripted by Yuan Shu. They are all peasant households who work at home. Once they were arrested and turned into soldiers, they didn't even know what they were doing. How could you blame them for this?"

Therefore, Guo Peng ordered to treat these captives kindly, find out their household registration, and prepare for the next step of diversion.

Guo Peng's big victory here felt quite triumphant, but Yuan Shu vomited a mouthful of blood and fell into a coma when he returned to Shouchun City, and he didn't wake up for several days.

Yuan Shu's crown prince, Yuan Yao, lacked prestige and could not control the overall situation. The court of the Chen Empire was in chaos, and the newly established Chen Empire fell into a precarious situation in an instant.

Thanks to the presence of General Lu Mian, the situation was barely maintained.

He sent troops to guard the city gates, declared a curfew, entered a wartime emergency, arrested and killed more than [-] rioters, and the city gradually stabilized.

Subsequently, Lu Mian, as a general, mobilized the only remaining soldiers inside and outside Shouchun City to deploy defenses on the south bank of the Huaihe River to Shouchun City.

Because the main force was all lost on the north bank of the Huaihe River, Lu Mian can only control [-] soldiers and horses at the moment, and he can't compete with Guo Peng at all.

In order to gather enough troops to defend the city, Lu Mian forced the powerful officials in the city to donate their slaves and private soldiers to join the army, using this method to increase the number of troops and horses to fight against Guo Peng's southern expedition.

Because extraordinary measures must be taken at extraordinary times, Lu Mian ordered all men in the city to join the army, and all middle-aged women were recruited to serve in the army, without any objection.

For this reason, not only Li Shu, but also the officials and wealthy families in the city were disturbed by Lu Mian.

In order to gather more people, Lu Mian even ordered the elite guards to go out of the city to arrest Li Shu and enter the city to assist in the defense. In a short period of time, [-] troops were expanded, and nearly [-] people were recruited to join the city defense.

During the busy process, Lu Mian suddenly felt that it was not a bad thing for Yuan Shu to be unconscious, at least he could do everything he wanted to do, and Yuan Shu would not give everyone confusing orders.

Everything seems to be in order.

This is really a strange thing.

At the same time, Lu Mian once again sent people to Lujiang to recruit strong men, trying to gather more soldiers, and sent people to find out what happened to Liu Xun, who was conquering Sun Ce in the south.

If Liu Xun's army can retreat, it must be a very important help to Shouchun City Defense.

But soon he learned that Liu Xun had been cut off from retreat, and it was difficult to retreat, and now he had no troops to go south to assist Liu Xun, so he could only send someone to deliver a letter to Liu Xun, and let him ask for blessings.

Now that Shouchun can't protect himself, how can there be a way to help Liu Xun who is in trouble?

Lu Mian's immediate task is to ensure that Shouchun is not lost, which is the limit of what he can do.

Compared with Lu Mian, who is in constant panic, Guo Peng has a lot more to spare.

Rectified the battlefield near Qixian County, cleaned the battlefield, set fire to the corpses to prevent the plague from spreading, and then began to recruit and rectify the captured defeated soldiers and civilians.

Every time a place is conquered, Guo Peng will send a mature grassroots government team to the newly occupied place, centering on the county seat, recruit refugees, appease the people, and re-establish new rules and new rules.

This is the real occupation, instead of occupying a county seat, it means occupying all the land in the county.

Villages need to be established, and townships must also be established. The imperial power does not go to the countryside, but Guo's power must go to every household.

The policy of educating Li and common people to read and write since the occupation of Qingzhou has harvested a large number of literate people who meet the minimum literacy requirements.

From among these people, Guo Peng can select talents who are good enough to serve as village and township heads, and let them enter the People's Association for training, and then come out to serve as village and township heads.

After the initial start-up stage, the system for selecting village chiefs and township chiefs has gradually been established and matured, and the "People's Office" as a training institution for village chiefs and village chiefs has also become more mature.

This time, it was also an opportunity for these village chiefs and township chiefs who were born in Li Shu and had high hopes for Guo Peng to show themselves.

Among them, those who work well will get the opportunity to study in the palace and strive for more possibilities for the future.

And every time a new site is expanded, more people will have the opportunity to be appointed. Guo Peng hopes that this will become the beginning of a new possibility, not the end.

Of course, for Yuan Shu, this was the end.

Chapter 415 .410 Si Guo Peng really likes Cao Hong more and more

These low-level officials who contact the people and directly rule the people generally come from two sources.

One is the children of the poor family group that helped Guo Peng start his business.

Most of them are the children of the families of the generals under Guo Peng's command. Needless to say, the Cao family, Xiahou family, Guan Yu, Zhang Fei, Zhao Yunle, Li Dian, Zhang Liao, Zhang He, Xu Chu Dianwei, the children of their families, and a few civil servants, such as Cheng Yu's family.

The children of these families will enter the school to study with the children of the Guo family, and then they will be placed by Guo Pengan's side for an internship for a period of time, and then they will be sent to a certain village by personal arrangement.

Guo Peng asked them to start as village chiefs. For example, Cao Ang was sent to a village in Chenliu County by Guo Peng to serve as the village chief after being transferred to the mansion by Guo Peng to run errands for a period of time.

The second is Li Shu.

Guo Peng was born in a gentry, and he used the power of the Cao family and the Xiahou family for his own use. He pulled up a team and became a rare gentry warlord. Therefore, it was the Cao family and the Xiahou family who helped him the most.

There are not many gentry involved in the starting forces, and most of the Yuancong Group are from poor landlords, so under Guo Peng's command, the power of civil servants and generals from humble landlords is stronger than that of the gentry bureaucrats.

Not to mention military generals, all of them were from humble backgrounds of landlords or Li Shu.

As for the candidates for the governors of the five states under Guo Peng's command, except for Guo Peng's Qingzhou pastor, three of the four were not from noble families.

Inspector of Yanzhou Bao Xin, Inspector of Jizhou Cao Cao, Inspector of Bingzhou Zang Hong, Inspector of Youzhou Xian Yufu, among the four, except for Bao Xin, a die-hard supporter of Guo Peng, none of them came from noble families.

After Cao Cao was an eunuch, Zang Hong was the son of a defeated frontier general, and Xian Yufu was a powerful man in Youzhou. The backgrounds of the three were all discriminated against by the sons of the gentry.

So for a long time, some of the gentry children in the academy have ridiculed Guo Peng in private for degrading his status, lowering his own status to be with those poor families and mud-legged people. They are not noble at all. The nobility of Yingchuan Guo's "family clothes and crowns" cannot be seen.

Presumably it was the fact that his branch was exiled by the master's family and could only be the county magistrate, right?

The children of the gentry secretly exchanged such views and snickered endlessly.

Of course, this is not the majority, at least now that the high ground of public opinion is completely controlled by Guo Peng, his black spots are so pitifully small that some opposition parties can only mock him in this way.

The gentry forces under Guo Peng's command are mainly concentrated in the general's mansion, state pastoral mansion, and counties. These middle and high-level civil officials are all descendants of the gentry.

When going down to the villages, the literate Lishu elites are the main ones, and the children of the poor landlords are the assistants, and there is not a single son of the gentry.

Guo Peng not only uses the poor children from the core group around him as the village and township heads at the grassroots level, but also teaches Li Shu to read, selects the smart ones to enter the People's Association for training, and then comes out to serve as the village and township heads of various villages and townships. known things.

Guo Peng told the outside world that it was a practical need, and the officials were nervous. There were not enough officials to go down to the grassroots to manage hundreds of households in the district, so he had to choose literate elites from the Li Shu to manage the rural institutions.

As for the countryside, it is the scholars who are in charge.

Officials' nervousness is not a fabrication, it is a fact, so this aspect has not caused divisions within the ruling group.

Guo Peng suppressed the elites of Li and Shu at the village level, and did not use anyone as the chief executive of the county or county. The identity advantage of the Chief Executive.