So the Tang Army's big bronze cannon every once in a while, it will fire a round, when the spark of the twist rises, the point let go of the hands jumped into the pre-dug soil pit, in case they were blown to death, but this batch of artillery under strict control, are made of fine copper, there was no explosion accident, but tirelessly, constantly fired fierce shells at Suide City. lā

This kind of siege mode, which abandons the ant colony-like clinging to the strong attack and changes to the non-stop fire bombardment, fully embodies the tactical concept of the Tang Army, which is 500 years ahead of the times.

By dusk, the cannonballs streaked the long tails of the flames, and did not let up in the slightest, constantly smashing into the walls, forts and moats of Suide City.

By the early hours of the morning, half of the 4,000 Dangxiang rebels had fled, and most of them fled in the direction of Fort Servus and Gusigu Fort, but they were soon captured by the Bao army and the Jingsai army who blocked the road, and the cavalry of Fan Hee Chao alone captured nearly 500 prisoners in one night.

At noon the next day, the fighting spirit and morale of Suide City collapsed across the board.

When the Dingwu army and the Yining army pushed the shield carts, filled the ditches under the city, burned the wooden fence with fire pipes, and approached the city, they noticed that most of the city walls had been blown down, and the iron and stone bullets that were deformed and sunken in the smoke were scattered everywhere—some of them were carried to the city by the party members, and they were thrown over their heads, smashing some of the shield carts.

Then Gao Yue's infantry divided into several roads, like a swift drill, along the gap that was blasted by the cannon, into the city.

At this point, most of the die-hard resistance in Suide City turned into corpses killed by the shelling, a small number committed suicide before the Tang army fell into the city, and the other 1,300 men and women came out of the hiding houses or sheds and surrendered to the Tang army.

This time, Gao Yue changed his old practice and revoked the procedure of open slave trafficking, "In the past, I wanted to demonstrate to the party Qiang, and the demonstration had to slaughter the city and kill people, but now I want to sweep away and eliminate their resistance as soon as possible, so this time I will send troops to suppress and appease them." ”

That being said, it's actually just a way to change secretly:

The army and the caravan reached a tacit understanding, directly registered the captured party members in the book, and then gave them a number, listened to their own description, divided the "service households" and "fixed users", and then let the archers who came to meet them be escorted to Xingyuan or Fengxiang's Guanzhuang Supervisors, except for the ordnance department, most of them have been contracted by Gao Yue to powerful Kuofang households (handicraft owners), merchants and situation households, and they "lease and hire" this group of labor through contract documents, of course, the price Gao Yue will always be preferential, It is much cheaper than hiring the common people to work.

The profits of the "slave trade" have changed their skin and continue to exist.

In addition to the unworthy Yongye fields, the Qiang households played the roles of workshop workers, weavers, ordnance workers, and of course, tenant farmers in cotton fields, and Zhanggu in horse mills.

They also had the power to live under the city, and people sometimes couldn't tell whether they were intended for use or for fixed use, so they collectively called them "attached city households".

In addition, Gao Yue also formulated a detailed "salary qualification for households attached to the city", and if the employer did not give them a promotion (that is, a salary increase), they had the right to appeal to the government, and after the government approved, they could revoke the contract between them and the employer, and match other employers who needed it and were willing to bear more pay.

To put it bluntly, this is to cultivate the "Qiang slave aristocracy" to divide and suppress the Qiang slaves, which may sound contradictory, but this is the case, and the so-called "worker aristocracy" in later generations is also like this.

After hearing that Suide City had been captured, Prince Nixiang's army only reached a place forty miles north of the city, and was so frightened that they retreated to the more precipitous Longquan City of Suizhou, while the other troops were stationed in Funing (now Mizhi, Shaanxi), Dabin, Yanfu and other counties.

Gao Yue came to the sand table map and saw that the whole situation was Longquan in the center, Dabin in the west, Yanfu in the east, and Funing in the back.

Then Gao Yue divided his troops: the Bao army, the Jingsai army accompanied by the Qiang soldiers of Luziguan from the Dangxiang fortress in the land of Dabin, the Zhaoyi army, the Fengcheng army, and the Fenghua army accompanied by the other Qiang soldiers of Tongye Shiliangbi from the Dangxiang fortress of Yanfu, as for Gao Yue, he was in the middle of the road, and after sweeping all the fortresses in Suide, he directly entered Longquan City.

At the same time, Gao Yue asked people to make a detour to the east of the river and sent orders to Han Tan and Li Jingluo, asking them to gather an elite army, go out of Yuhe Fort, cross the Mingtang River, and attack Funing from behind.

A month and a half later, several soldiers and horses were victorious.

The instant fall of Suide City under the bombardment of Gaoyue's artillery has dealt an extremely serious psychological blow to Liufu and Lishi Dangxiang - since Suide City, which has been painstakingly built for nearly a year, was captured by the Tang army with powerful weapons in less than two days, how can other fortresses protect the lives of their clansmen?

Therefore, the soldiers and horses directly under Gao Yue conquered the seven forts of Jiushicheng, Fuchu, Guxigu, Xixiling, Jiyushan, Chengping, and Baodingling one by one, seized tens of thousands of stones of grain, 7,000 cattle and sheep horses, and the party guarding it almost did not go through any resistance, and then nearly 10,000 men and women began to line up in long queues after being incorporated and registered, and were escorted to the prefectures and counties of Xingyuan Fengxiang as "attached city households".

The soldiers and horses on the west road captured the Dangxiang fortresses in Zhutian Mountain, Dalichuan, Xiaolichuan and other places;

Similarly, the soldiers and horses of the East Road also captured Qinglong Mountain, Luoyang Mountain, Dahechuan, Xiaohengshan, Wu'ercheng, Midrowning Fort, Holy Buddha Cliff and other fortresses, and the party items surrendered one after another.

Only the old city of Yanfu was built on top of a mountain cliff and was a Jedi on three sides, Hun Xuan, Li Ziliang and Wang Yangui felt that it was tricky, so they sent people to ask Gao Yue for help, and Gao Yue supported eight large bronze cannons.

Only a day after the cannon fired, the 2,000 rebels in the old city of Yanfu came out and surrendered.

In the end, the mud incense prince of Longquan City was panicked all day, he knew that no matter how dangerous the city was, it could not stop the Tang army's powerful fire, so he thought about crossing the east side of Baiyu Mountain from the south valley of the Wuding River, and taking advantage of the Tang army's encirclement network to unify Wancheng as soon as possible.

Before the winter solstice, more than 30,000 party members in Longquan City cried loudly, discarded most of the fields and livestock, took a small amount of dry food, ran out of the city, and under the leadership of the depressed and desperate Prince Nixiang, they swept through the frozen and snow-covered Wuding River Valley, gave up the hope of holding on, and began to flee to Tongwan City.

Ten days later, the outpost cavalry of the Tang army, seeing the abandoned appearance of Longquan City, boldly entered directly, and then found that most of the party items in the city had been taken off, leaving only some old people who could not move, freezing to death and starving to death in the snow.

When Gao Yue came to Longquan City, he saw that this city was really precipitous, standing like an icy throne in the snow and mist, it was surrounded by stone cliffs on all sides, the east was eighty feet high, the west was one hundred and forty feet high, the south was forty feet high, the north was one hundred and twenty feet high, and the city wall was two hundred steps around four miles, so he smiled and said: "Qiang thieves are bold, such a city, only a few tiger cannons are used to defend, and 30,000 elites are difficult to capture. ”