The eighth day of the lunar month is the traditional sacrifice day of the Han nationality, and it is also the day of the Buddha's soup porridge to commemorate the Buddha Shakyamuni. Because the Labali Spring Festival is approaching, every household has begun the beginning of the 'busy year', although there are some differences between the north and the south, but generally have to boil porridge and sacrifice to the gods. And this day is also considered to be the coldest day of the year, with the saying of 'Laqi Laba frozen dead chickens and ducks'.

On this morning, the west gate of Yangzhou was opened, the suspension bridge was lowered, and a group of men and horses quickly went out of the city, and the sentry cavalry of the Song army saw that the people from the city were holding high the banner of writing the word "peace discussion", and immediately divided into two teams, and a team of men and horses galloped towards the camp. The rest of the horsemen went up to meet them, and after asking about the situation, they checked the tokens before leading the way, leading them to their own camp.

"Alas......" Ma Shao glanced back at Yangzhou City, urged the horse to follow, and looked at the road ahead but sighed. Since the king of Zhennan took over the defense of Yangzhou City, while rectifying the various departments, he also began to urge the husband and soldiers to repair the city defense. And the Song army was not idle, they continued to try to repair the long bridge and open the way to attack the city, and the two armies naturally would not let the other succeed, and the battle broke out.

The battle between the two sides took place mainly in the sandwich city outside the main city. The city was the last stronghold to protect the main city, and once lost, the Song army would be able to approach the city. The city of Jiacheng has long been destroyed, and it has become a top priority to repair it at present, and the five thousand troops reorganized by the private soldiers and the six thousand soldiers mobilized by the state capital, a total of 10,000 people rushed to repair day and night, and besieged the city on the original basis, reinforced it with wooden fences, and built war sheds on the city walls.

In order to complete the project as soon as possible, all the trees planted along the moat were cut down due to the lack of timber; When there was no earth, all the original houses in the city were demolished, and all the stones, bricks, and timber obtained were used to build the city. For a time, the mourning was everywhere, in this coldest season, the people who had lost the shelter of their houses wanted to enter the city to find a place to shelter from the cold, but Tuhuan ordered the city gate to be closed in the name that the main city could not be settled, and the people in the city were forbidden to enter the city. Ma Shao thought that such a harsh treatment of the people would not only cause panic, but also lead to unrest, so he went to the Zhennan palace to ask for a meeting.

Since that day, Tuhuan took control of the military and political power in Yangzhou by thunderbolt means, the palace has replaced the government and become the center of Yangzhou City, all officials have to go to the Zhennan Wangfu to ask for instructions and report, Ma Shao is no exception, he actually knows that he is only in charge of Yangzhou government affairs in name, in fact, it has long been hollowed out, and it is not as effective as a small principal in Zhennan Wangfu.

Ma Shao thought that everything was about defending the city at present, and it was okay for him to suffer some grievances, but he couldn't see his nonsense, and felt that he had the obligation to speak up for the people. Tuhuan did not completely refute his face, and promised to give half of the food supplied in the city, but still refused to enter the city on the grounds of preventing disturbances in the city.

Although it is not a vain return, but Ma Shao is still very melancholy, Tuhuan has almost all the collected food and consolation money in his own hands, which has been regarded as his own private property, and those people outside the city Ding Zhuang have been requisitioned, and the remaining old and weak women and children are just regarded as waste of resources in vain, and they refuse to give relief, and they can have less trouble if they die.

In fact, the Song army naturally did not sit idly by and watch their side repair the city safely, which would only increase the difficulty of their siege, although they could not attack the city, they would bombard it with artillery to destroy and stop it. The power of the artillery is huge, and the city wall that was repaired in a hurry was not rammed, let alone covered with bricks, and it would collapse if it was hit by a few shots, so it did not make much progress, and it was in the cycle of just repairing, being blown up, repairing and blowing up.

At first, in order to avoid casualties, the Song army also let the servants temporarily avoid the artillery fire when the Song army fired artillery. But later, in order to speed up the progress, he couldn't take care of it, even if the Song army opened fire, he also ordered the servants to go to the city to build. Often, when a shell falls, the surrounding people fall in pieces, blown up flesh and blood, or buried by the collapsed walls, killing and wounding thousands of people every day.

Even so, Tuhuan still ordered that the work should not be stopped, and the soldiers were forced to build day and night, and those who violated the order were killed on the spot, causing the number of dead and wounded to multiply, and the dead and wounded were buried on the spot by filling in the city wall. Ma Shao heard from his subordinates that the entire city could be said to be being built with the bones of the servants, and the walls were all blood-red, which could be called a city made of flesh and blood.

On the contrary, the Song army couldn't bear to see this, and shot at the city, and changed the day and night cannon fire to every afternoon, so that the servants and people who repaired the city could take refuge and stay away from the city wall, so as not to cause innocent casualties. When Ma Shao heard this, he felt that the little emperor of the Southern Dynasty was kind, but he sneered at it, thinking that the kindness of his women would not be a big thing, and even said in private that the more these husbands died, the more food they could save, and they could hold on for a little longer, and they could wait for reinforcements to arrive.

Everyone knows that once the Song army succeeds in building the bridge, they will be able to come to the city, and with the power of their artillery, the hastily built earthen city cannot stop the attack of the Song army. Therefore, the safety of the city is all pinned on the moat of more than 50 zhang wide, fortunately it is that in order to erect three long bridges that are connected with the outside world, dense wooden piles were laid in the moat, each wooden pile has a thickness of half a foot, rammed into the bottom of the river more than one zhang, each row has six to eight, a total of more than 30 rows, as a bridge pile, constitute a flat bridge structure.

The presence of these wooden piles made it impassable for Song ships, so that they could only be laid from the other end. In order to prevent the Song army from building bridges, Tuhuan set up trebuchets in the middle of the city, and arranged archers on the head of the city to prevent the Song army from building bridges, repeatedly destroying the bridges that had been formed, and causing a lot of losses to the Song army, so the progress was also extremely slow.

However, the situation became more and more unfavorable to their side, and under the pressure of the Song army and the strict orders of the dehuan, the casualties of the soldiers and servants defending the city became more and more serious. The servants were either killed by the artillery fire of the Song army, or they were exhausted, and even their own people's knives. Left and right were dead, and the servants began to take advantage of the dark night, or with the help of the Song army's artillery bombardment, regardless of the river, to swim to the other side to surrender to the Song army.

When the soldiers who began to defend the city found out, they would shoot arrows and kill them, and countless corpses floated in the moat, but they still could not be stopped, and there was an intensifying trend, and even the soldiers defending the city joined them and defected to the Song army's camp. In order to stop this wind of defection, Tuhuan ordered the implementation of joint sitting, one person defected, and all Ding Zhuang in one square and one mile were beheaded, but this triggered a greater escape, anyway, one person ran away or died, so let's just run together!

What is funny is that it was the Song army that stopped the private soldiers and Ding Zhuang from fleeing. In the early morning of the day before yesterday, the Song army suddenly changed the previously agreed practice of opening artillery bombardment of the city in the afternoon, and began to build a bridge under the cover of artillery fire, and the Yuan army immediately counterattacked with trebuchets, and the archers in the city also fired thousands of arrows to try to stop the Song army from building a bridge.

However, this time the Song army did not retreat after being counterattacked as before, but attacked the Yuan army's catapult position with more intense artillery fire. As soon as the two sides fought, the shortcomings of the catapult's short range, slow firing speed, low hit rate, and difficulty in changing positions were exposed. However, the artillery of the Song army could fire relatively accurately under the command of the observation post set up on Beacon Hill, destroying their stone throwers one by one. The archers in the city were even more vulnerable under the blows of artillery fire, and even the city walls were blown up into the sky.

Under the cover of artillery fire, the Song army also began to build the bridge, they fixed several prefabricated long rails to the original foundation piles, and then pushed the assembled bridge components along the guide rails, and a section of the bridge deck was laid. Once a foothold was established, the rails were laid forward as a springboard, and a new bridge component was used to push the old one forward, and a large section of the bridge deck was quickly laid.

After reinforcing the bridge deck that has been laid, the remaining section of the bridge deck is also much simpler, a traditional trench car is pushed along the erected bridge to the broken bridge, everyone makes concerted efforts to push the trench car into the river, when the lap plate is put down, a long bridge across more than 50 zhang moat is laid, and the time taken is less than an hour.

Under the cover of artillery fire, the infantry army quickly crossed the long bridge and rushed straight to the city, and the artillery fire then extended forward, and the Song army rushed straight to the city head along the slope formed by the city wall that had already been collapsed by artillery fire, and fought with the Yuan army. Those private soldiers who were used as cannon fodder had long been frightened by the continuous artillery fire, and their morale was completely lost, and they were defeated after resisting for a while under the fierce attack of the Song army's guns and stabs, plus grenades.

After establishing a bridgehead at the head of the city, the follow-up Song army continued to cross the moat, rushed to the head of the city, and developed along the city wall to both flanks to drive the Yuan army out of the city and into the city. Tuhuan knew how serious the consequences of the loss of the city were, and after the loss of the city, he sent cavalry out of the main city, trying to launch a counterattack to drive the Song army out of the city. The Song army in the lower city used the houses and ruins in the city to block the Yuan cavalry, and the Song army in the city also condescended to shoot the enemy cavalry.

The city was not large, the streets were not wide, and the ruins and broken walls left behind after the repair and demolition of the city made it difficult for the cavalry to deploy, and it was even more difficult to gallop on horseback, and the impact force was greatly reduced. The cavalry without speed became a live target, and it was difficult for the Song army to advance after building simple fortifications, and as the artillery entered the city, the cavalry's counterattack was thwarted again and again.

Although Tuhuan urged the troops to attack at any cost, but nothing was gained except the dead corpses all over the ground, and seeing that the counterattack failed, the Song army not only stood firm, but also pursued the defeated soldiers into the main city, realizing that the loss of the city was a foregone conclusion. Without waiting for the defeated troops to return to the city, he ordered the city gates to be closed and lost them to the Song army. And this is why Ma Shao went out of the city to pray for peace today......