Chapter 20 In the third quarter, the Kunyang battle array kills Wang Xun

The offensive and defensive battle of Kunyang City has been going on for more than 20 days. The Han soldiers are short of food and the fighting conditions are getting more and more difficult.One day in the first ten days of June, the Han army on the city looked out of the city, and suddenly saw a cloud of dust rising behind a mound in the south of the city. After a while, they heard a faint sound of war drums and shouts of killing.After a while, the lookout post officially reported: "The reinforcements led by Liu Xiu have arrived." Those who heard the news first rushed to spread the news, and the good news quickly spread throughout the city, and everyone was full of hope. Increased confidence in victory.

Liu Xiu and others dispatched thousands of reinforcements from Dingling and Yancheng to the outskirts of Kunyang, and formed a formation four or five miles away from the new army, ready to fight.Liu Xiu observed the enemy's formation and decided to strike first.He personally commanded 1,000 infantry and cavalry as the vanguard, and rushed to the enemy bravely.Wang Xun and Wang Yi were arrogant and underestimated the enemy, thinking that the Han army was small, so they only sent a few thousand people to fight.The Han army attacked bravely and killed many enemy troops at once.After this small battle, Liu Xiu found that the morale of the new army was low and he was unwilling to fight, so he took advantage of the victory and continued to attack, beheading more than 1,000 people in the new army, and won the first battle.

Just three days before Liu Xiu returned to Kunyang, the main force of the Han army led by Wang Kuang had already breached Wancheng, but the news had not reached Kunyang, and Liu Xiu didn't know it either.In order to boost the morale of the Han army and disintegrate the fighting spirit of the enemy, Liu Xiu made a battle report that Wancheng had been conquered according to his own estimation, and shot it into Kunyang city with arrows; he also deliberately lost another letter with the same content, Let the new army pick up and spread.As soon as this important news came out, the Han army in the city was greatly encouraged, their morale was even higher, and their confidence in defending the city became stronger; the new army outside the city fought hard for a month without making any progress. Already lost, morale is even more depressed.

Liu Xiu saw that the morale of the new army was getting lower and lower, and believed that the conditions for killing the enemy were ripe.He organized 3,000 elite soldiers into death squads, detoured to the southwest of the city, crossed Kunshui by surprise, and launched a violent attack on the base camp of the new army.For a moment, the sound of drums and trumpets resounded through the sky, and the sound of shouting and killing shook the world.Wang Xun and Wang Yi, who were proud and underestimated the enemy, saw that the Han army was not strong, but still thought it was vulnerable, and did not make combat deployments. They personally commanded more than 10,000 people to go out to meet Liu Xiu; and ordered the rest of the army not to act without authorization.The Han army became more courageous because of successive victories.Most of the soldiers in the new army were peasants who came under temporary coercion. They hated Wang Mang and were unwilling to fight. The generals also excused that Wang Yi had issued an order of "no unauthorized action", so they were happy to stay still, so the Han army rushed into the new army. , I didn't meet much resistance, and all of them took one against a hundred, as if entering the land of no one.The Han army became stronger and stronger as they fought, and they attacked fiercely, unstoppable.It didn't take much effort to defeat the more than 10,000 new troops personally commanded by Wang Xun and Wang Yi.Liu Xiu led the Han army to pursue the victory and killed Wang Xun in the battle.

When the new army began to be defeated, Wang Feng commanded the Han army in the city to take advantage of the momentum and attack the new army.At this time, due to the death of the commander, the morale of the new army had plummeted, and it had completely lost its combat effectiveness. It collapsed like a landslide. And so the wild beast has already escaped.Just as the new army was looking forward to fleeing, the sky suddenly darkened, and then the wind howled, thunder and lightning roared, and heavy rain poured down. The Fu (zhi) River in the north of Kunyang City immediately swelled.The sound of wind, thunder, rain, water and the shouts of the Han army merged into one, almost drowning the desperate new army.In fact, more than 10,000 Xinjun soldiers were drowned in the flood, and the corpses blocked the Fuchuan River, almost preventing the water from flowing.Wang Mang's hundreds of thousands of troops, just like this, died, wounded, fled, and completely collapsed. Wang Yi was lucky not to be killed, but he was scared out of his wits, and hurriedly rode with Yan You, Chen Mao and a few others. On the horse, stepping on the corpses of the new army, crossed the Fu River, and fled back to Luoyang in embarrassment.

After the great victory in Kunyang, the Han army attacked Luoyang and Chang'an with the momentum of sweeping away the clouds.In October, Wang Mang was killed in Chang'an, and the evil rule of the new dynasty was overthrown. The Battle of Kunyang was a just war fought by the green forest peasant uprising army to overthrow Wang Mang's regime, and it was also a famous example of winning more with less.The fundamental reason why the Han army defeated many with fewer was that the majority of peasants hated Wang Mang and wanted to overthrow his brutal rule.The armies of both sides were composed of peasants. The Han army fought bravely, with one against ten, while the new army was unwilling to fight and fled before the battle. These were all manifestations of peasants' opposition to Wang Mang's rule.Therefore, it can be said that the glorious results of the Battle of Kunyang were jointly achieved by farmers on both sides.In terms of military guidance, the Han victories and new defeats were due to Wang Xun and Wang Yi not knowing the art of war, blindly underestimating the enemy, and making mistakes in subjective guidance.On the other hand, in the face of the siege of powerful enemies, the Han army adopted the correct policy of active defense and standing firm for help. , Liu Xiu and others responded to the battle calmly, commanded correctly, and finally won a decisive victory.