si-mexico Chapter 490 A Difficult Problem
Chapter 490 A Difficult Problem
When they heard that Shen Changgong was going to test everyone, several commanders perked up.
Shen Changgong said,
"Let's take the battle you fought earlier as an example.
Suppose that each of your armies has 100,000 men, and the city you want to attack has 40,000 to 50,000 men. The Qi army knows that we have artillery and divine thunder, and they know that they cannot defeat us by defense.
So the commander of the Qi army came up with a dirty trick. His own soldiers hid in the homes of the common people one by one, kidnapping them to fight against our army.
Because the enemy forces were too dispersed, our artillery and divine thunder could not cause much damage.
Moreover, if it is a street fight, the enemy is in the dark and our army is in the light. We know nothing about the enemy's deployment and I am afraid there will be heavy casualties.
If you were faced with this situation, how would you break the situation and completely annihilate the enemy while minimizing the casualties among our troops and civilians?"
When Shen Changgong said this, everyone gasped and started thinking while stroking their chins.
Yu Ziling's face turned red instantly and she looked at Shen Changgong coquettishly.
How could she not see that Shen Changgong was trying to find ways to praise her?
It's so embarrassing.
Shen Changgong also gave her a look, signaling her to stay calm and not speak.
Zhang Han, the commander of the Zhennan Army, was the first to speak.
“Your Majesty, if I were faced with such a situation, I would charge right in, using superior numbers to search for the enemy from house to house, and kill them all.
If all the enemies are dead, won't we no longer have to worry about civilian casualties?"
Everyone burst into laughter.
King Nan was very upset.
Shen Changgong waved his hand and said,
"Zhang Shuai, please sit down first. I'll use your pig brain for something else."
Zhang Han's old face turned red, and after sitting down, he asked Yuhua Tiandao beside him,
"What? Am I right?"
Yu Huatian shook his head and said,
"No, the enemy will push the civilians to the front as shields, and even if they don't do that, the chaos of the battle will inevitably cause harm to the civilians and damage their houses and property.
Those houses and other things are nothing to us, but to ordinary people, they are everything. If they are destroyed, they will really have no way to survive."
Zhang Han sighed,
"There's no way to fight this. The enemy troops and civilians are all mixed together. Even a strong attack won't work. What should we do?"
Jiang Shun said,
"Why don't we try setting fire to the house? As soon as the smoke rises, the enemy and civilians will run out. Then the archers ambushed outside can quickly kill the enemy soldiers and save the civilians."
Yu Huatian shook his head again and said,
"It still won't work. You are too much of a devil. If the people see their houses burned, they will pick up kitchen knives and join the Qi army in fighting our army.
And the next day, the news spread that our army had massacred and burned the city, and we were labeled as a brutal army.”
"This doesn't work, and that doesn't work. What should I do?"
Jiang Shun said unhappily.
Li Bohan suddenly had an idea and said,
"Well, I have a good idea. We can collect some non-lethal poisons, such as laxatives, and also collect some medicines to treat laxatives.
Then we can poison the city's water source, causing the soldiers and civilians to suffer from vomiting and diarrhea, rendering them incapable of fighting. Then we can charge in, kill the enemy, and use the medicine we've collected to treat the civilians. How about that?"
Everyone:? ? ?
Yu Huatian said again,
“It still doesn’t work. Your Highness is assuming that we are attacking the four cities. Among the four cities, except for Weishan City, which is close to Weishan Lake, there are no rivers as water sources in other places.
If they wanted to poison people, they could only enter their homes and poison their well water, which was no different from directly attacking and killing people.
Weishan Lake cannot be poisoned either. It is the water where the people live. If all the fish there are poisoned to death, not only will the people lose their source of income, but the water quality will also be seriously polluted. This is inappropriate."
Zhang Han said with a frown,
"You've denied everything we said. So tell me what we should do."
Yu Huatian shook his head and said,
"I don't have any particularly good ideas, but I can use the tactic of capturing the leader first.
We can first capture some houses, capture some Qi soldiers, and force them to tell us the whereabouts of their commander.
The commander-in-chief had dispersed all his soldiers throughout the city, and there wouldn't be too many soldiers around him. As long as they could find out the commander-in-chief's whereabouts, they could capture him first and then force him to surrender.
This way, losses can be minimized.”
As soon as these words were spoken, everyone's eyes lit up.
However, Yu Huatian said,
"But as long as the enemy commander is not a fool, he won't be captured so easily by us.
The fact that he could come up with such an idea shows that he is very shrewd and ruthless. He doesn't even care about the lives of his own people, so how could he care about the lives of other soldiers?
He would most likely hide with his trusted associates and would not let other soldiers know his location.
All we can do is search house by house, which is no different from a direct attack.
He could even issue an order that as soon as the Yan army came to attack, all the soldiers would immediately hold the civilians hostage and fight to the death with the Yan army. By the time we found him, most of the soldiers and civilians in the city would have been dead.
The Qi army knew that we, the Great Yan, were a benevolent and righteous army and would never do anything like massacring the people.
They will take advantage of this mentality of ours to force our army not to act rashly.
Therefore, I can't think of any better solution for this matter except to capture the leader first."
Zhang Han waved his hands carelessly and said,
"If you ask me, the tactic King Shen mentioned is impossible to happen. Those are Qi troops, and the people among them are Qi civilians, not civilians from the enemy country.
How can you use your own people to threaten the enemy army? If you don't care about the lives of your people, then the enemy country will care even less.
All they need to do is massacre the city.
And no one would do this, because the people are the foundation of the court. If it gets out and other people know about it, the court's soldiers will push their own people out as human shields and use houses as battlefields. The court will instantly lose its credibility and majesty. Which people will be willing to obey it?
The army is to protect the people, not to massacre them. This kind of thing cannot happen."
Shen Changgong smiled leisurely and said playfully,
"Really? Then if I tell you that this is exactly what happened during the battle of Xixiang City, how would you respond?"
"what?"
When these words were spoken, everyone was shocked.
Yu Huatian frowned and asked,
"Your Highness, are you saying that in Xixiang City, which General Yu attacked, the enemy commander actually hid all his soldiers in the homes of the people, using the lives of the people to threaten our army and force them into street fighting?"
"Is such that."
"How did Yu Shuai break the deadlock?"