Several days later.
After spending five days racing back and forth over hundreds of miles, surveying the border between Jiaodong and Yangxia counties, Yan Yunqing, carrying a heavy heart filled with worry and disappointnt, returned to the main camp.
The thing he feared most had happened.
Just as he had suspected previously, all the Chu camps stretching over three hundred miles were well fortified and on high alert, not revealing a single flaw in their military governance.
A million Chu soldiers were indeed so well managed that they seed to move as one, forming a formidable front.
Faced with such an enemy, Yan Yunqing was at a loss and could not think of a way to respond.
And when he returned to the main camp, there were even more distressing matters.
Compared to the Chu army’s disciplined and unified forces, the Liang army was simply riddled with errors and unbearable to witness.
It must be admitted.
As the hegemon of the Central State, Liang occupied a central position in the Nine Provinces, surrounded by formidable opponents, having fought countless tough battles over decades. The Army sprouted a countless number of talented generals, making it shine like stars in the sky.
In this regard, Liang was not lacking in generals capable of leading troops into battle.
But the problem also lay here.
Because the intensity of the wars was so great, after each major battle, Liang would lose a large number of soldiers and generals.
When these losses occurred, initially, relying on the deep resources within the Liang territory, the aristocratic families could quickly send their own descendants into the army to serve as mid and high-level officers, while veteran soldiers were promoted to lower-level officer positions.
With this thod, despite suffering great losses in manpower after each battle, Liang could quickly recover strength within half a year to a year, as new soldiers were trained and the various level officers beca well-coordinated again.
Therefore, in the early stages, Liang was able to maintain an advantage while facing attacks from the Three Nations of Wei, Zhao, and Xu, and at tis could even launch counterattacks.
But no amount of talent reserve can endure constant losses month after month, year after year, especially when each ti the losses numbered in the hundreds or thousands.
The sons and relatives of Liang’s aristocratic families, however abundant, inevitably had a limit.
A family with thousands or tens of thousands of people was already reaching the sky.
Excluding the old and weak, as well as those not trained in martial arts, the actual number of descendants who could join the army was only a few hundred at best.
Wei, Zhao, and Xu were not weak states; they might have been at a disadvantage in national power compared to Liang, but the basic quality of their soldiers was roughly the sa.
In a great battle with one of them, even if Liang erged victorious, at the least, it would suffer losses of tens or hundreds of thousands of troops, among which the fallen generals would be counted by hundreds or thousands.
One great war could eradicate all the manly descendants of a clan who had joined the army.
And how many aristocratic families did Liang have?
Only several dozen or a hundred.
After a hundred great battles, the core male mbers of these families would be scattered, and the families thoroughly ruined.
So, after fighting wars for over a decade, and after tens of thousands of their descendants had died, Liang quickly beca aware of this severe issue.
Therefore, to preserve strength and to reduce losses, the aristocratic families within Liang territory consciously reduced the number of their descendants joining the army.
Without these descendants, who had been ticulously trained and had a solid military upbringing, as well as being heirs to their family’s military traditions, the mid and high-level officers within the Liang army began to experience a shortfall as the wars intensified.
Consequently, they had no choice but to relax the previously stringent standards and promote officers from the lower classes and grassroots origins.
These officers of humble background were not lacking in courage or even had enough battlefield acun and intuitive understanding of leading troops into battle.
After all, they too had erged from the bloody battlefields, wading through seas of corpses.
But however brave these n were, and however sharp their intuition, they ultimately could not change the fact that they were late starters who hadn’t undergone systematic training and might even have been illiterate.
An army of thousands or tens of thousands might be able to ignore the gaps in the quality of their officers, fight to a stalemate, or even win a victory based on the courage of their officers and enough luck.
But in a battle involving over a million soldiers, even if you are an Inborn Grandmaster, the impact of individual valor becos extrely limited.
An Inborn Grandmaster, after a battle, at most could kill a few thousand people.
And a few thousand people, for an army of a million, is but a drop in the ocean.
Never mind one Inborn Grandmaster, even if there were ten Inborn Grandmasters, and you let them kill a million people, it’s likely they would be exhausted to death before finishing the job.
If that’s the case for Inborn Grandmasters, then the impact of valor from ordinary officers is even more limited.
Since bravery was ineffective, then in a clash between two armies, what cos into play is the quality of each side.
This quality refers to the disparity between soldiers, the gap in command by the officers, and the difference in coordination between the various military units.
Despairingly, in all three comparisons, the Liang army did not hold an advantage, and was even at a disadvantage.
Take the disparity among regular soldiers for example, although the Liang soldiers were battle-hardened, having erged from one fierce battle after another.
But the Chu forces were not inferior.
In the past thirty years, Chu had been in a state of peace within its heartland, but its border regions could hardly be called peaceful.
To the southwest, Rainforest Barbarians continued to migrate north; tens of thousands of miles of coastal waters faced continuous raids by sea pirates; and to the northwest, yearly expeditions beyond the passes involved heated battles with the Barbarians of Yong West.
With three major battlefields, Chu’s military deploynt remained at a constant five hundred thousand. During intense warfare, it could even reach a million.
And Lu Yuan, to maintain the combat effectiveness of Chu’s soldiers, had adopted a rotation system, dividing the dostic soldiers into three batches to take turns on the front line for training.
Reviews
All reviews (0)