92. Bingwei Yumen County

After transporting the wounded back to the rear for treatment and the deceased back to their hometown for burial, Li Wenyuan led his troops to continue marching in the direction of Yumen County. Along the way, Xiaoxing stayed hungry and thirsty all night, and finally caught up with Li Rail's reinforcements. Surrounded by Yumen County, in fact, the Yumen mentioned here is not the kind of pass of the Nine Passes of the Great Wall, nor is it the Yumen Pass that guards Dunhuang, but a county town that guards the main road of the march.

After all, when a large army marches, it is inevitable that it will be followed by a large number of teams transporting baggage. The restrictions on transportation routes made the ancient armies extremely fierce for the fortress standing on the marching route, and in ancient times, it was easy for a fortress with thousands of people to hold the march route of tens of thousands of troops. Therefore, before the advent of planes, automobiles, trains, and other high-speed and high-speed means of transport, all armies had a cautious attitude towards the tactics of interspersed encirclement. Although this kind of interspersed encirclement can often have the effect of defeating the enemy, it also has to face the situation of being surrounded. The situation on the battlefield is changing rapidly, and there is only a thin line between being besieged to death and the center blooming, so except for the war when it reaches the stalemate stage, a very small number of generals will choose this extremely risky tactic.

After commanding his soldiers to besiege a county town in front of him, Li Wenyuan was extremely curious about the county town in front of him, which was not a pass but no different from the inland cities. In the end, it was only under the information provided by the military lords that they woke up, although it is also called Yumen, it is Yumen County, and it is the first pass of Dunhuang County facing the interior, not the majestic Yumen Pass that resisted the Hu people for hundreds of years.

Because it did not have to bear the military role of resisting the invasion of the Hu people like Yumen Pass, but only provided a resting place for the merchants and troops passing by, there were no very strong city fortifications in the county in front of it, and there were even a few city walls that peeled off under the wind and rain for a long time, revealing the rammed earth layer and civil engineering framework inside.

At this time, the gate of Yumen County was closed, and the Sui banner that could be seen everywhere in the Central Plains had long been missing. Instead of the banners with the character Li written on them, Li Wenyuan carefully observed the county seat in front of him, and had some plans in his heart about how to capture this county seat, but in view of the fact that the officers and soldiers defending the city were all Chinese, Li Wenyuan still had the mentality of giving it a try and asked his subordinates to persuade him to surrender first.

After receiving Li Wenyuan's order, more than 100 men with very loud voices walked out of the army, walked out of the range of the defenders' bows and arrows, raised the iron horn to their mouths, and shouted out the words of persuasion that had been prepared to surrender to the defenders in the city. This rhetoric was drafted by Zhang Juntai himself, and Li Wenyuan also took it to see it, and the whole rhetoric is nothing more than nothing: Li Wenyuan came to quell Li Rail's rebellion on the orders of the emperor, and the rebellion was done by Li Rail alone. Those of them, as soldiers and lower-level officers, were all confused by Li Liang's demagoguery for a while, so they did such a rebellious thing. The emperor's grace is vast, if they can get lost and open the city gate to surrender, regardless of their previous suspicions, they will also be given money according to their official positions and rearranged their official positions. If they resist to the end, they will be liquidated after the city is broken, and all the families of those who participated in the rebellion, all men will be sentenced to death, and all women will be used as official slaves.

Li Wenyuan is not optimistic about the effect of this persuasion speech, after all, the source of Li Rail's army comes from the four county governments he controls. The families of those soldiers must also be among the four county capitals, and maybe they are also under the control of Li Liang. If you surrender to yourself at this time, then your family will inevitably die. But if you resist to the end, maybe you can still protect the safety of your family.

Sure enough, the more than 100 men shouted for a morning. failed to persuade the officers and soldiers defending the city to surrender, and Li Wenyuan saw that the soldiers in the camp who were ready to attack the city were ready, so he no longer entangled with the defenders in the city. rescued the more than 100 men who persuaded him to surrender, and directly ordered Zhang Juntai to command the army to start the siege.

Li Wenyuan watched in the back barracks as Zhang Juntai commanded his army to start an attack on Yumen County, and the infantry held shields against the rain of arrows shot from the city head to carry the ladder down the bottom of the city wall, and then slowly leaned the ladder against the city wall, and then began to climb, ready to climb to the top of the city to start fighting.

The defenders in the city also began to use the clapper to constantly try to overturn the ladder, and in some places where there was no clapstick, they threw the city defense weapons such as rolling logs and stones along the ladder. Seeing that the three successive attacks were beaten back by the defenders, Zhang Juntai was also red-eyed and wanted to go into battle shirtless in person, but was pulled back by Li Wenyuan. Li Wenyuan looked at Zhang Juntai and said: "Don't save it, use the Yumen to train the soldiers first, and let the second division go up." ”

Zhang Juntai nodded in desperation and asked the second division to start attacking the city.

I had already seen it clearly in advance that the entire city wall of Yumen County in front of me was made of earthwork with wooden beams, and the outside was made of city bricks. And because it is located in the northwest, there has always been a shortage of water, and because it has not assumed important military duties, the entire Yumen County does not even have a moat to protect the city. The officers and men of the 2nd Division, under the cover of the sound of the 1st Division's muskets firing at the head of the city, began to dig tunnels to the bottom of the city walls.

After digging for a long time, the tunnel was finally dug under the city wall of Yumen County. The foundation of the wooden stake that was driven into the ground was found, but some of the foundation had rotted away after being buried in the ground for a long time, and it was about to break at the touch of a button. The officers and men of the 2nd Division supported many wooden piles in the position of the original foundation to prevent the immediate collapse of the wall, and then widened the cavity under the wall by a few points.

Of course, not every team to dig tunnels is smooth sailing, this time a total of 20 teams were sent to Yumen County from different directions to dig holes, but during the period, there were troops because the construction was too urgent and caused a landslide halfway. Some of them were finally dug under the city, and after being detected by the defenders in the city, they broke through the hole and poured poisonous smoke and water and fire into the tunnel, which also made the second division also have a lot of Internet access.

Fortunately, most of the team still managed to knock the hole under the wall, and smeared the pillars of the wall with flammable materials, and finally used gunpowder to draw the combustible materials directly to the outside of the hole, and finally ignited the gunpowder with flint. As the fire dragons slowly burrowed deep under the city wall, they ignited the decaying pillars, and the pillars that were supported by the auxiliary pillars were all formed into large cavities one by one, and then they could no longer support the weight of the city wall and the rammed earth layer above, and they collapsed one after another. At this time, the Mo sword soldiers of the first division set out from the battalion, and with their heavy armor against the rain of arrows of the remnants of the defenders at the head of the city, they rushed to the gap in the collapse of the city wall, and began to fight on the city.

(End of chapter)