After An Shouluan defeated the elite forbidden army of Karahan in the lower reaches of the Chu River, he traveled upriver along the Chu River and arrived at the foot of Broken Leaf City.

The next day, Zhi Congyuan also led the main force of the Tang Army to arrive. From time to time, the tribal cavalry that received orders to go to Balasyan for reinforcements clashed and fought with the Tang army, and along the way, countless Karakhan people and horse carcasses fell to death in the wheat fields on both sides of the road, and the Tang army swept through the large green fields like a hurricane, setting off a bloody storm.

The horses were galloping, the earth was trembling, and the horsemen on the horses smelled of blood.

The Karakhans threw almost all of their elite troops, as well as the hundreds of thousands of "mujahideen" recruited from West Asia, south of the Tianshan Mountains to conquer Khotan and Gaochang in the hope of unifying the Western Regions. King Satuk did not expect that his greed and ambition would eventually attract the thunderous anger of the Tang Dynasty.

The only defense of Shattered Leaf City was a patchwork of 30,000 horses, more than half of which were old and weak.

The Karahan tribes around Broken Leaf have long since disappeared, and only the mighty Tang army marches in the hot weather, and there is no end in sight.

The gate of Broken Leaf City had already been tightly closed, the shouts and killings outside the city resounded in the sky, and the five thousand Karahan troops who hurried out of the city to meet the enemy were attacked by the Tang army and began to scatter and flee, and You Sufu, who was standing at the head of the city and watching the battle, sank suddenly. Red battle flags hunted in the wind, and the Tang cavalry rushed like an unstoppable torrent in the field, leaving corpses everywhere behind them.

The Tang army did not directly attack the city.

Zhi Congyuan was convening his subordinates to hold a military meeting.

The so-called military meeting is actually a meeting in which generals and staff officers gather together and then work together to find a way to solve the problem. In many things, it is not enough to rely on the judgment of the generals alone, but staff officers are needed to plan and come up with ideas to make up for the loopholes in the plan.

This is what Li Qi strictly demands.

Before every major battle, a military conference with the participation of staff officers must be convened, and the minutes of the meeting must be submitted to the Privy Council for examination and filing. If there were no minutes of the meeting, it would have been greatly discounted in the evaluation of merit after the war. Although Zhi Congyuan and the generals felt that it was not much of a problem to defeat Shattered Leaf City, this kind of superficial article still had to be done.

This kind of thing sometimes makes up for the mistakes of the generals' decision-making, and sometimes it interferes with the generals' decisions. I knew that this meeting would not have much effect, but it still had to be held. So Zhe had been napping since the meeting, and the other guys were studying the terrain of the Karahan Kingdom and evaluating the fineness of the sand table. But the young staff officers, you and I are talking some boundless nonsense, except for the impassable plateau and mountains in the south, the rest of the place is the endless Gobi Desert.

Where to use any strategy and strategy, just push it all the way through.

The question is where can they hit?

With such a vast land, an army of 70,000 or 80,000 can drag down the entire Western Regions just by supplying.

The advantage of having staff officers is that the generals have also learned to look at the war from an economic point of view. Sometimes, even if it's a big win, when measured from an economic point of view, it doesn't seem like a good deal.

For example, now, after discussing for a long time, we finally reached a relatively unified understanding.

That is, the current Tang Army cannot easily cross the West River (Syr Darya), which is the farthest distance that can be guaranteed by the current logistics situation.

It is the most foolish thing to attack a well-defended city and fill it with human lives, and the steppe people generally take the form of siege. And the Tang Dynasty people had already learned to make all kinds of siege equipment in the pre-Qin era.

Before the arrival of the Don army, the Karakhan king Satuk fled to Zhezhi City (Tashkent) with part of the Janissaries and ministers. As the previous criminal general, Yusuf was responsible for staying behind in Balasa Yancheng.

Yu Sufu originally thought that the 30,000 soldiers cobbled together in the city were enough to defend the city, and held on until the Tang army retreated due to lack of food and grass, or the Karakhan army in Khotan and Gaochang returned to help.

However, the scene he saw outside the city completely subverted his original cognition, and in less than half an hour, all his 5,000 subordinates had died outside the city, and they didn't even have a chance to escape back to the city. The firearms in the hands of these Tang cavalry were very terrifying, as soon as the battle began, the dense rain of bullets caused the loss of more than a quarter of the Karakhan cavalry of 5,000 people, even the armor soldiers wearing heavy armor could not escape the doom, and were pierced by the flying projectiles, and the flesh and blood were blurred.

Yusuf was shocked to find that just the more than 10,000 forwards of the Tang army might have the strong strength to sweep the entire Karahan Kingdom, which shook his original confidence.

"General, the surrounding area is full of Tang cavalry, and we are already surrounded." A fully armored Karakhan general reported to Yusufyu.

Yu Sufu said expressionlessly: "What we can do at present is to hold the city to the death, drag the Tang army under the city, and wait for the king to borrow a large army from the Seljuks, or after our army from Khotan and Gaochang is driven back, none of these Tang people can leave." When the time comes, the heads of these pagans will be made into fine drinking vessels! Pass my order, all Ding Zhuang in the city will be recruited and recharged, given weapons and armor, and take turns to defend the city! ”

After setting up the artillery to the top of the tall building car, the Tang army began to attack Shattered Leaf City.

Rumble! Boom!

Rumble......

The siege began, and the artillery of the Tang army continued to pour shells on the city, as if it was preparing to use steel to destroy the stubborn will of the Karakhan people, and the flames and smoke from the explosion engulfed the entire city. The gate tower of Shattered Leaf City is full of gunsmoke and flames, and the collapsed castle towers and stumps flying everywhere show the cruelty of war.

"Forgive your sinners, O Lord God Ahuramaz!"

"The punishment of light and fire has come ......"

"Ah, that's the sin of betraying Ahura......"

Many old people who originally believed in Zoroastrianism were kneeling and praying, and slowly, many of the originally suppressed contradictions between the Grolu and the Turgish people who still insisted on believing in the god of fire, the Uighurs and the Roshi people who converted to the Holy Religion, and the Turkic nobles broke out.

One night, a large-scale civil strife broke out in the city, and the Turgish, who were in charge of defending the north gate, opened the city gate and asked for help from the Tang army.

After receiving the news, Zhi Congyuan quickly led the Chinese army to the outside of the city, only to see that the city was full of fire, and the city gate was wide open. He rode on his horse and observed for a while, then waved his hand: "Zhang Chenghan, you lead your troops into the city first!" ”

"Rush!"

Zhang Chenghan let out a loud shout in his mouth, raised the spear in his hand, took the lead, and began to break into Shattered Leaf City......

The whole city was already in chaos, and everyone was running wildly. The people in the city have completely lost the will to resist, and they only know how to scatter and hide everywhere.

Shattered Leaf City has fallen so strangely......

……

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