Modern people are influenced by film and television dramas, and many people have the impression that the ancient siege mode is: as soon as the enemy comes, the defender immediately closes the city gate, and then fires arrows, throws stones or pours hot oil; The besiegers took a ladder and went up, and the better ones were equipped with some trebuchets. In fact, although these scenes are an indispensable form of offensive and defensive warfare in ancient cities, the real battles are much more complicated.

First of all, the offensive and defensive battles will not be as sloppy as in the TV series, but have a strict deployment. The defenders should reconnoiter the enemy, inventory the reserves, prepare and manufacture various tools for defending the city, and send messengers to contact the surrounding reinforcements. And the defense weapons are not just a three-piece set of bows and arrows, stones and hot oil, Meng Yuan not only learned to use siege equipment, but also learned to use siege equipment in the capture of the Central Plains and the conquest of Central Asia. Especially after the capture of Jiangnan by Meng Yuan, he received the surrender of the Song Dynasty and inherited various weapons and equipment left behind.

Cities are the political and economic centers of the surrounding defenses, as well as military fortresses, and most of them have arsenals and large quantities of ordnance in case of war. This is especially true as a capital city, where the arsenal of the Song Dynasty not only has commonly used weapons such as knives and guns, bows and arrows, and armor, but also long-range heavy weapons such as bed crossbows, stone throwers, five-tip cannons, and seven-pin cannons. In addition, various firearms such as gunpowder arrows, tribulus artillery, and leather cannons will also be stockpiled in large quantities. In addition, fire-fighting equipment such as water tanks, buckets, pumps, and hemp will be arranged to prevent fire attacks.

In short, an arsenal in a city is like a grocery store, and there is no shortage of materials that can be used for war, from the most bulky stone thrower to a leather rope, and there will be a lot of them, especially in a military town where soldiers must fight. It is said that when the Ming army captured Xi'an at the end of the Yuan Dynasty, there were more than 100 bed crossbows made in the Song Dynasty more than 100 years ago on the city, which shows the abundance of armament.

For thousands of years, Shouzhou has been a military town for the sake of war. In this land, there have been many shocking battles of "the sunset shines on the banner, and the horse sings the wind and flute"; There are countless well-known names who have become kings and defeated here. There is a history for the record, there is the famous Eastern Jin Dynasty in the Eastern Jin Dynasty at the foot of Bagong Mountain outside Shouzhou City, the "Battle of Weishui" that took place by the Weishui River to win more with less.

When Qin destroyed Chu, the two armies fought a decisive battle here, and King Yingzheng of Qin finally broke Shouchun, the capital of Chu, and completed the great cause of destroying the six countries and unifying the world; When Liu Bang and Xiang Yu and Chu and Han fought, Liu Bang, the king of Han, cut off the back road of Xiang Yu, the king of Chu, according to Bagong Mountain, forced him to defeat the Wujiang River, and killed himself to thank Jiangdong's father, and finally became a great cause of the Han family; The story of "Zhao Kuangyin trapped in the Southern Tang Dynasty" is still circulating in the streets and alleys of Shouzhou.

As a city that has been repeatedly destroyed and built, all dynasties have also been repaired, and Shouzhou has also formed a royal city based on the Chu Wangcheng, and the inner city and the outer city are three city defenses, so in the case of the loss of peripheral points, this city is the last line of defense. And the siege of the city is not as simple as in the film and television drama, you must first clear the surrounding strongholds, and then you can reach the bottom of the city wall, and it is not enough to build a ladder and set up a trebuchet underneath. There will also be fierce trebuchet battles and earthwork between the two sides. The real siege battle is much more complex and tragic than in film and television dramas.

After the Song army crossed the river and went on a northern expedition, the main force was naturally unable to resist the two Huai, so the second army went north smoothly until it reached Shouzhou. After the two sides conducted an ambush and counter-ambush battle outside the city, due to the huge disparity in strength and combat effectiveness, the defeated Yuan army gave up the battle for the periphery and instead relied on the city to hold on and wait for the situation to change.

Liu Zhixue carried out reconnaissance while sweeping the villages and towns around the city and clearing out small resistance forces. According to the information obtained, after the Yuan army retreated to the city, it immediately requisitioned Ding Zhuang, distributed weapons to prepare for war, and allocated 7,000 crossbow gunpowder arrows, 10,000 bow gunpowder arrows, 3,000 tribulus artillery, and 20,000 leather cannons, and built 53 war towers to prepare for the unexpected. He also gave 1,000 wooden poles and iron spears, and 3,000 pairs of armor, and distributed them to the soldiers and civilians who guarded the city. Concurrent with 30 baskets of thistle terrestris. He also made 540 pairs of marijuana, 1,100 pairs of bamboo pumps, and placed 500 water tanks in the city to store water in case of accidents.

Liu Zhixue was only a low-level officer before entering the Shuaifu, and he had participated in the offensive and defensive battles with Meng Yuan, so he naturally knew the cruelty in it. Therefore, after detecting that the enemy army in Shouzhou was well prepared, he also hesitated, planning to use a long-term siege or attack after building equipment, so as to reduce his own casualties.

However, a holy edict from the little emperor made Liu Zhixue have to reconsider his battle plan. For the hasty siege, the generals were also opposed, and suggested that the truth be explained to His Majesty and ask for a postponement of the siege. But after all, Liu Zhixue is not a petty officer back then, but a senior general who stands alone, and can no longer only consider the interests of his own small group, but must take into account the overall situation, so he resolutely persuaded the generals to carry out His Majesty's orders.

It is said that it was in a hurry, but in fact, Liu Zhixue also tried his best to prepare in a short time, planning to make up for the lack of firearms in the case of insufficient equipment, and then launch an attack on the city after striking a heavy blow to the enemy, so as to reduce the casualties of the soldiers. They concentrated all the large and small artillery pieces in the army, demarcated their respective firing areas and targets according to the reconnaissance situation in the early stage, and arranged their positions according to the range and performance of the artillery.

After the failure of persuasion, the Chinese army raised a watchtower several feet high, and the Guantong outpost condescendingly took into view of the situation in the city, and he constantly informed the Chinese army's participation in the arrangement of the enemy's troops, and they calculated the artillery firing yuan, and then reported it to each artillery group, calibrated the shooting target, selected the appropriate ammunition type, and calculated the fuse delay time.

"Fire!" After receiving the report that the various departments had prepared, Liu Zhixue personally gave the order.

......As a medium-sized artillery, this kind of artillery has become the main type of artillery of the Song army because of its strong weight, easy to carry, fast arrangement, long range, and great power, that is, it can fire shotguns and live ammunition. Corps, divisions, and regiments are all equipped, and there are as many as 100 units in one army.

The slightly dull whistling sound of the cannonballs flying indicates that the solid shells fired were used to tear the curtains hanging from the city walls, destroy the dense war sheds and towers on the city walls, and expose all the city defenses. After a round of test firing, after adjusting the firing of Zhu Yuan again, the sound of artillery also intensified. The drapery used to hold back artillery and arrows, as a sharp weapon to 'overcome rigidity with softness', may still be useful against catapults and crossbows, but they are as if they were just a papier-mâché wall in front of the faster-flying, more impactful solid cannonballs fired by the artillery.

When the curtain that obscured the view was destroyed, the tents on the walls were exposed. The brick and stone battlements crumble under the impact of shells, and the huts made of wooden planks used to hide soldiers and store city defense equipment could not resist the impact of lead bullets. The defenders who had lost cover scattered in search of new shelter, clinging to the wall to avoid being hit, and some unlucky ghosts were hit, and in an instant they became a bloody pile of flesh, and even if they were rubbed, they were missing arms and legs and became crippled.

The castle tower is a symbol of the "city", showing the majesty and majesty of the city, and it also has a military role. The brick and timber towers were not only the lookout post, but also the headquarters of the defending generals, and an extremely important shooting base. But in the face of the powerful artillery, its function was not enough, the brick wall behind the ruler was pierced, the thick pillars were broken, and the tall tower collapsed like a building block after several rounds of concentrated artillery fire.

The bed crossbows and stone throwers equipped on the city are a huge threat to the besiegers, and they are naturally the key targets of artillery. The trebuchet hidden behind the city wall is also not safe, once it is discovered by the artillery observation post, it will immediately be notified to the artillery in front, they will be equipped with flower shells, equipped with a delay fuse, and shoot in the form of projectile, the target that receives special treatment will not only be destroyed, but also the surrounding soldiers will be killed by the flying shrapnel.

After the exposed city defense facilities were destroyed, the mortars arranged in the front line began to fire, as infantry forward support artillery, its light weight, fast rate of fire, easy to transfer to accompany the infantry attack, and can kill hidden targets, and generally equipped to battalions and men, the number is more. The flowering shells they threw exploded both above and below the city, and the enemy soldiers who had escaped the fire of the Weiyuan cannon were not so lucky this time.

During the Song and Yuan dynasties, firearms had begun to be widely used in warfare, but they were still in the primitive stage, and the firing method was still dominated by manpower. The firetle-terrestris is the original version of the grenade, while the skin cannon is an explosive bag of gunpowder wrapped in animal skins, which can only be used in a thrown-out manner. The only long-range firearm is the so-called 'rocket', which is actually equipped with a powder pack on the surveillance to increase the range, but also because it is difficult to ensure the hit rate, the lethality is not large, and it is mainly used for arson.

The flowering shells fired by the mortars exploded on the city, not only causing serious damage to the enemy soldiers who were hiding, but also igniting the 'firearms' stored on the city walls, and for a time it was like a firecracker stall that was ignited, causing a larger explosion, and the enemy soldiers who were not injured under the Song army's artillery were injured by their own firearms. The saddest thing is that there is fire oil next to it, and once that thing is contaminated, it will basically be scrapped. And because Shouzhou City is built using the soil slope method, it can quickly transport troops, but because it is a slope, the enemy soldiers hiding under the city have nowhere to hide, and they are exposed to mortar bombardment......

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