Yelu Zongyuan couldn't wait to launch a siege battle, but soon, he was doused with a scoop of cold water.

At the pre-war decision-making meeting, a huge conundrum was raised. That is, even if the ring of fire in the trench is breached, the soldiers and horses can advance to the place below the city. But the problem was that the fire in the three trenches outside the city had not been extinguished, and if an army of 500,000 were to attack in full force, it would cover a distance of five or six miles below the entire city. Under the division of the fiery trenches, it will be difficult for the soldiers and horses to launch an effective charge.

The trenches were dug miles outside the city, and the last trench was less than five hundred paces from the city walls. This makes the space on the battlefield extremely cramped. The range of the bows and arrows of the defenders at the head of the city was as high as more than a hundred paces, and it was impossible to gain a foothold within forty or fifty paces to the left of the burning trench. Therefore, in fact, the attacking soldiers and horses could only line up within a range of about 300 paces. This is absolutely not possible. What would be the situation in such a narrow area, where catapults could be erected, and at the same time accommodate a large number of other siege equipment and a large number of siege soldiers and horses. Even if it is densely packed with people, it can accommodate more than 100,000 at most.

An army of 500,000 attacked the city, but could only use 100,000 soldiers and horses to attack, isn't this a self-cutting of arms and self-loss of combat strength?

When these questions were raised by the ministers and generals, Yelu Zongyuan suddenly realized that the previous firefighting operations had been almost useless. It turned out that the role of these trenches dug by the opponent was not only to block the attack, but also to change the terrain, divide the formation of the attacking troops and horses, and destroy the position of the opponent's attacking troops and horses.

Originally, I thought it was too simple, but I ignored these details. This is not an attack by a small group of soldiers and horses, only a few hundred steps of space can be moved at will. The offensive and defensive battle of hundreds of thousands of soldiers and horses requires a vast battlefield space. What the army needs is all the fields within a radius of more than ten miles under the entire city, so that the advantage of the superior number of soldiers and horses can be fully brought into play. Therefore, in such a situation, it is obviously impossible to attack the city rashly. The wisest thing to do is to wait for the fire to be extinguished completely, and then fill in all the trenches or fill in hundreds of passages for the unhindered movement of troops and horses.

In other words, in fact, the previous days of busy work have been done useless, not only did useless work, but also damaged dozens of precious catapults. Because those catapults were all captured, they were not newly built catapults. Every catapult has a service life, and the catapults of the Great Zhou have been bombarded day and night for several days when they attacked Jinfu, in fact, many catapults have reached the verge of scrapping. In the past few days, many catapults have fallen apart directly. Now it seems that all this is worthless.

The anger in Yelu Zongyuan's heart was not to mention, but he calmed down, made some careful weighing, and finally did it

He made a wise decision to wait for the fire to be extinguished. This decision is frustrating, but it is also a last resort. Although the time pressure for the attack was very high, as the local folk song says, 'In the middle of October, the sky is full of snow, and the latest is not until the twenty-third', in the middle of October, there will be heavy snow in the land of Liaoyang. Therefore, it is necessary to take the city before the heavy snowfall, but you can only take this risk and wait for the fire to be extinguished. Yelu Zongyuan believed that there are many good things, as long as he was prepared for everything, when the big war began, he might only need two or three days, or even a day, to capture Liaoyang Mansion. This is called sharpening the knife and not cutting wood.

On the fifth day of October, after burning for three days, the fire in the first trench finally burned out and was extinguished. Braving the scorching heat of the ground, the Liao army began to bulldoze and fill the trenches to prevent a resurgence. At the same time, the terrain is also rested, so that the army can pass unhindered. On the afternoon of the eighth day of October, the fire in the second and third trenches was extinguished. The Liao army immediately advanced and filled in the trenches. In the evening of the same day, the company battalion advanced outside the city, and the army set up a formation on the spot.

From the second day of the first month of October to the eighth day of the first month of October, the three trenches that took 70,000 Jurchen people nearly a month to dig were actually only delayed by seven days. This may seem uncost-effective and unworthwhile, but in fact, the value of some things is not in the superficial effect, but in the chain reaction that it will bring later.

Of course, Yelu Zongyuan couldn't wait any longer, and in the early morning of the ninth day of the first month of October, the horn sounded for a long time, and the war drums shook the sky. In the dawn of dawn, 300,000 Liao troops launched a fierce attack on Liaoyang City from three directions: southwest, north, and south. The Battle of Liaoyang finally officially began.

The Liao army is no longer the field soldiers and horses that can only raid with cavalry, and their attacks are very orderly. Two hundred and fifty steps away, hundreds of catapults suppressed the fire on the city, and the overwhelming stones fell on the city, and the city was suddenly shrouded in a cloud of smoke and mud. After that, tens of thousands of cavalry archers rushed to the edge of the moat and fired longbows and arrows at the head of the city, further suppressing the enemy army at the head of the city. After the formation of firepower, a large number of sappers quickly arrived at the moat with carts pushing various pontoon bridges such as wooden paddle bridges and began to build offensive passages on the moat.

The defenders at the head of the city were a little confused at first, after all, the Jurchens were not good at defending the city. In the face of the all-round suppression of the opponent's heaven and earth, the defenders at the head of the city were a little helpless at first, and they were smashed by stones, and they suffered heavy casualties. But soon, the Jurchens' counterattack began. In a short time, the Jurchens reacted, and the archers in the enemy towers at the head of the city began to counterattack, and hundreds of bed crossbows erected at the head of the city also began to fire. Under the leadership of Wanyan Aguda, the Jurchens at the head of the city also stabilized their positions, they hid under the one-man high battlements, braved the falling rocks in the sky and began to shoot arrows to counterattack the city.

There was hardly any drag, and this siege battle was fought from one

At the beginning, it seems to have entered the climax. Arrows and stones in the sky shuttled through each other like moving dark clouds, obscuring the dim light of the sky. Up and down the city, the number of dead and wounded soldiers and horses skyrocketed, and without any process of adaptation, the battle situation entered a hot point.

The ferocity and intensity of the firepower on both sides were staggering, and the Liao army equipped 130,000 cavalry archers under the city to suppress the three walls with archery. With each round of shooting, 130,000 feathered arrows rushed towards the city. Even if it is fired from the back, even if it is covered by tall battlements, this kind of power is enough to make people tremble. Not to mention hundreds of catapults, which dumped countless stones from the sky. Those were big stones the size of a sea bowl, and they fell from the sky and hit people, and they would have smashed into a puddle of rotten flesh in the first place. Even if it doesn't hit people, it can be imagined how destructive it will be when it hits the battlements and defensive facilities. Within a quarter of an hour of the battle, the towers at the two heads of the city had collapsed, and the battlements raised above the walls had begun to collapse. Just like the battle of Xijin Mansion, the siege soldiers and horses of the Great Zhou Dynasty razed everything at the head of the city of Xijin Mansion to the ground and turned it into a bare piece. This shows the power of the catapult in the suppression of fire in siege operations.

But the Jurchens also had countermeasures, and among the more than 20 enemy towers built on each wall were set up a three-bow bed crossbow. This is the most ferocious kind of bow and crossbow among the weapons and equipment drawings provided by the Great Zhou to the Jurchens. As the name suggests, it is a bed crossbow made of three strong bows, and the power of the three bows shoots a crossbow arrow, and its power can be imagined. It is said that the most sophisticated three-bow bed crossbow can reach 700 paces away, and it can still break through rocks and open mountains. However, the three-bow bed crossbow that the Jurchens hastily built during this time was not so powerful, it was crude and not so powerful. However, the measured distance reaches 350 steps, and the condescending distance can reach 400 steps. Wanyan Agu made more than 80 of these bed crossbows and placed them on top of the enemy tower. His intention is obvious, it is precisely for the purpose of countering the opponent's catapult.

When the Liao catapults were raging, the three-bow bed crossbow also began to carry out point-to-point strikes. Although the Jurchens' archery skills were not high, although the three-bow bed crossbows they made were crude and inaccurate, and although they could not enhance their power with the iron spears made of pure iron like the Great Zhou, when the crossbow arrows with thick arms and hardwood iron heads were fired, they still carried a dull faint sound of wind and thunder. Less than half of the dozens of bolts hit the catapult, but as soon as it hits the key spot, the catapult immediately collapses. The bolt could even break a log with a thick bowl on a catapult.

When the Liao catapults brought huge casualties and destruction to the Jurchens in the city, their own numbers also decreased dramatically. The collapse of each catapult means that the suppressive force is reduced by one point, and it means that the Jurchens at the head of the city have more space to survive and fight.