The Jurchen army finally reached the riverbank, and they never imagined that this war, which was supposed to be extremely easy and comfortable as an autumn outing, would evolve into such a look. They have been going back and forth on the Songhua River several times, and they never thought that one day, crossing the river would become a difficult errand.

After the Jurchen soldiers came ashore, they began to line up and count the casualties.

The casualty figures were quickly counted, with more than 5,100 killed in battle, more than 500 seriously wounded, and more than 600 lightly wounded.

This statistic cast a shadow on everyone's hearts, dozens of times before, and the Northern Expeditionary Army fought more than a dozen battles, and the entire Haixi Jurchen casualties were only more than 10,000, and now, just one crossing the river, so many people have been lost.

The new weapons in the hands of the Ming army made them feel the pressure of the unknown.

Gangyi had a cold face and squinted at Xi Shenwei in the distance.

After a long time, he waved his hand: "Bury the pot and cook and rest until the end of the day." ”

When the Jurchen army, which had eaten and drunk enough and gradually recovered its morale, bypassed the earthen wall and marched to the south of Xishenwei, that is, when the Ming army siege camp was located, their eyes widened one by one.

It's still the towering Xishen Acropolis, and it's still the wide moat, but about six zhang behind the moat, there are three layers of earthen walls.

And above the three-story earthen wall, there were still soldiers standing with that strange stick that could make the sound of fire and bring death.

Seeing this scene, the Jurchen soldiers immediately shuddered.

Under the high sun, they only felt a chill in their hearts.

"Repeat the same trick!" Gang Yi gritted his teeth and scolded: "Damn! ”

Amin and Zilharang only felt a chill down their spines, although the Ming army was a very obvious repetition of the old trick, but it was extremely effective.

If you want to advance south, you must take Xishenwei, and if you want to take Xishenwei, you can only storm the southern wall, and if you want to attack the southern wall, you must cross the moat, and the earthen wall built by the enemy is behind the moat.

Rao can't get around, only hard fighting.

The three earthen walls, the same regulations as before, I don't know how many casualties will be paid this time?

On the city wall, a general asked with a shout: "Uncle, this is the same as before, can these Jurchen Tartars be fooled?" ”

Lian Zining smiled slightly: "It's not a matter of being fooled, everyone, you don't need to say much, just look at it." ”

At the same time, Gangyi was also asking Amin, "Is there a good plan?" ”

Amin shook his head: "There is only one way to fight hard, but we can think of a way to reduce some casualties." ”

"How?" Gangyi hurriedly asked.

Amin looked at Zilharang and said with a smile: "Jilharang must have thought of it too, so let him say it!" ”

Zilharang did not shirk, and smiled slightly: "General, what the Ming army holds is just a firearm, and the big wood we used when crossing the river can be made into a wooden shield to resist muskets." As long as this is the case, we can advance like a forest, and the advantage of their muskets can be reduced to a minimum. The wooden shield is thicker, and even the musket cannot be broken. ”

He was overjoyed with his fortitude, and praised him again and again, and hurriedly made the soldiers withdraw, and dragged the big logs ashore, and cut them with knives and axes, and made wooden shields.

After Lian Zining looked at it, he glanced at Chen Dakang beside him meaningfully.

Chen Dakang smiled bitterly, arched his hand and said: "Uncle has no last resort, mark admiration, admiration!" ”

Lian Zining laughed, patted him on the shoulder, and said meaningfully: "Lao Chen, these Jurchen Tatars have been civilized for decades, and they are learning from our Ming Dynasty every moment and every moment, thinking about how to attack the main Central Plains in the south, don't treat them as savages who drink blood, they also know the strategy, and they are not blindly fighting." ”

No one knows better than Lian Zining how well the Jurchens are capable of learning.

In fact, in Lian Zining's time and space, the speed of Jurchen progress was really outrageous, and in the forty years of Wanli, it was still in an era when Ru Mao drank blood, making a living from fishing and hunting. More than ten years later, during the Chongzhen period, it quickly transitioned to the late form of slave society, established a city palace, established a professional and powerful army, and even learned the firearms of the Ming Dynasty. In terms of playing with intrigue and trickery, the pigtail dynasty is not inferior to the Han people.

Now the three Jurchens surnamed Wanyan Chen monk I am facing are earlier than the historical civilization, faster development, and more powerful.

Seeing the Jurchen soldiers retreating, Shi Dazhu was not in a hurry, but just ordered the soldiers to sit down and rest on the spot, eat what they should eat, and drink what they should drink.

The Jurchens sweated like rain here, chopping wood like dead dogs, and the Ming soldiers over there were eating and drinking while laughing, bursting into laughter from time to time, and they didn't know what was going on.

When the Jurchen soldiers heard this, they were even more upset, and they couldn't help but stretch their necks to look over there, and when they were discovered by the officers, they immediately smashed down with a burst of fists and kicks on their heads and faces.

Shi Dazhu smiled slightly, this is also what Lian Zining ordered before, for the Jurchen's military morale or combat effectiveness, it can be weakened a little.

In the afternoon, the Jurchen soldiers finally made only one wooden shield, which was made of logs, which was very rough, and there were even many wooden thorns on the surface that had not been cleaned. But the victory is thick and strong, and each wooden shield is about three feet in diameter and two inches thick.

The weight is not expensive, reaching more than fifteen catties, but it is not too much of a burden for these powerful Jurchen warriors.

"First send 50,000 foot soldiers up, fill them with sacks, and throw them into the moat. Amin, you command! Fortitude commanded.

"Yes, sir!" Amin took the order.

When he said that he was in charge of guarding Xishenwei, seeing that the Ming army attacked Xishenwei and suffered extremely heavy casualties, he looked at it from the city, and he also felt shocked. Ever since he knew that he might attack Xi Shenwei, he had been thinking about this in his heart, and he was already a little careful at this time.

When Xu Pengju only invested two guards, carrying sacks full of soil back and forth to fill the moat, the result was that the soldiers suffered two attacks and suffered heavy losses. So this time, he decided to invest 50,000 troops at a time, concentrate on a certain section of the river, and completely fill it up.

In order to avoid the dense firepower, under Amin's orders, the 50,000 Jurchen soldiers scattered among themselves, and from the city tower, it was a dense and large area, which seemed to be almost covered in sight. They held a wooden shield in their left hand to protect their chest and head, and in their right hand they held a sack, and their weapons were hanging from their waists.

They carry a lot of weight on their bodies, and because of this, they move very slowly, almost step by step.

However, the continuous shooting that the Ming army had caused them huge casualties before was useless at this time.

Two hundred meters south of Xishenwei is the moat, and five miles to the south of the moat, there is a large array of Jurchens, cavalry and infantry, and the banner is full of sky.

Like Xu Pengju at that time, Gangyi chose this location to line up, which is the best safe distance.

The Jurchen soldiers slowly approached, and when they reached a place where they were still more than 800 meters away from the moat and a thousand meters away from the city wall, they were already within the range of the giant crossbow.

If the commander on the city wall was not stupid, and at the same time had a sharp weapon at hand, he would never let go of this opportunity to suppress.

Lian Zining was certainly not stupid - in fact, he used the deterrent power of firearms to Jurchen soldiers to create a big trap.

When the Jurchen leadership, fearful of the power of the firearms on the three-story earthen wall behind the moat, ordered the soldiers to strengthen their defenses, they had already fallen into Lian Zining's trap - strengthening the defenses, no matter what method was used, raising shields or thickening armor, would increase the weight and slow down.

The inevitable consequence of slowing down is that the Jurchen soldiers will spend more time passing this period of one thousand meters of death - and the longer they take it, the greater the blows they will naturally suffer, and the more enemies the Wu Yi Army will be able to kill!

Lian Zining had already calculated that after the battle of sniping by the river, the Jurchen army would be very afraid of firearms, so they would try their best to avoid firearms strikes, so that they would have to bear the blows from the city walls.

In fact, the muskets and cannons on the three earthen walls behind the moat were just a cover to lure the Jurchens to this point - of course, if the Jurchens were not fooled, then those muskets would have enough for them to drink a pot.

The so-called virtual is real, the real is virtual, the virtual and real are transformed, and the magic is endless.

When the Jurchen soldiers rushed within a thousand meters, Lian Zining raised his hand high and ordered: "Trebuchet, launch!" ”

This time, the Ming Northern Expeditionary Army originally had the intention of attacking the city and recovering the lost territory, and had long known that siege warfare was indispensable, so a large number of trebuchets, bed crossbows and other siege equipment were prepared, all of which were escorted by Wu Yijun. Therefore, these instruments were not captured and destroyed by the Jurchens, and all of them were preserved intact. This can be regarded as a blessing in misfortune, if these sharp weapons are obtained by the Jurchens, I am afraid that they will go all the way south to attack the city, and they will get twice the result with half the effort.

With your measures such as collecting ships, Lian Zining won a lot of time to prepare, and sat on a lot of work.

The hundred trebuchets carried by the expeditionary force were all placed on the city wall by him, and the city wall of Xishenwei was high and thick, and it could be let go as much as possible.

The trebuchet was a very important siege weapon in the era of cold weapons, both in the East and the West, it appeared invariably, and when this weapon was invented, there was no intersection between the civilizations of the two sides. Trebuchets can throw boulders into enemy walls and cities, smashing houses, killing and wounding soldiers, and even smashing walls, causing massive damage. Also known as stone cannons, it can throw one or more objects, objects can be boulders or gunpowder weapons, or even poison and corpses, thrown into the city, causing a plague, which can be called the world's earliest biological and chemical weapons.

The trebuchet in China first appeared in the Warring States Period, and the stone projectile was thrown by manpower in a place far away from the trebuchet by pulling the tips attached to the crossbar (cannon tip, erected on a wooden frame, one end of which was tied with a rope to hold the stone projectile, and the other end was tied with many ropes to facilitate human pulling) to throw the stone projectile, which was divided into single and multiple pins. There are up to 13 pins, and it takes up to 500 people to cast them, and the power is extremely terrifying. This thirteen-tip trebuchet can even smash down walls with a single blow from an oversized boulder.

Before the Song Dynasty, trebuchets were mainly launched by manpower or animal power, that is, a large number of soldiers or war horses suddenly pulled the pull cable in one direction at the same time, and pulled up the force arm to shoot the heavy cannon stone in a parabola. Subsequently, the Mongol army developed the trebuchet to be extremely sharp and terrifying due to the world war.

The Mongol army recognized the importance of trebuchets in the siege of the city, and quickly introduced technology to improve it, designing a composite bow structure with double crossbow backs, which was more elastic. At the same time, such crossbows were sometimes used to fire special iron arrows and fuel cylinders. Subsequently, during the conquest of Khorezm, the Mongol army introduced counterweight trebuchets from Central Asia, which they called the return cannon.

The return cannon is the use of heavy objects instead of manpower or animal power, soldiers first use the winch to lift the heavy objects, after loading the guns, release the heavy objects, the guns are thrown, greatly reducing the personnel and space for work, you can adjust the weight to control the range, the throwing accuracy is greatly improved, and begin to project chemical weapons mixed with drugs and incendiary materials, decomposing human and animal corpses, etc. The Mongolian Iron Cavalry can be said to be the originator of chemical warfare.

The Ming army originally used firearms in the early stage, but later, after the abolition of firearms, the trebuchet was rebuilt, and there were trebuchets on the border fortresses everywhere.

In this era, trebuchets played a similar role to cannons.

The trebuchet of the Ming army inherited the specifications of the Mongolian army, the structure is complex, but the power is very strong, and the hundred trebuchets on the city wall are all large trebuchets. Underneath is a rectangular wooden frame, ten meters long and eight meters wide, made of giant wood that two people hug together. The wooden frame is topped by a five-metre-high frame, which is also secured by giant columns. The boom is six feet long, and above the frame, a counterweight weighing 20,000 catties is fixed.

A trebuchet of this size is enough to shoot stones weighing 200 to 300 pounds over a distance of more than 350 paces.

Three hundred and fifty steps, less than a thousand meters, but when the weight of the projected object is reduced, this step can be done.

In fact, it is not a good idea to use trebuchets against loose infantry - because a boulder is the limit of rolling on the ground a few times because of the huge kinetic energy, or crushing ten people, and more often than not, the boulder is killing one person or not one person is killed because of the huge weight and impact force of the ground.

In addition to intimidating the besieging party, nothing has been done.

But Lian Zining naturally has a way.

He still remembers a tome he read before he crossed a book called a blood boil, in which there is a section of defending the city that is very wonderful and exciting, and the protagonist in it is to use a trebuchet to defend the city, not to shoot boulders, but to shoot broken bricks...... Broken bricks flew down from the sky, breaking the heads of the besiegers and causing heavy casualties.

He originally thought that this was his own original, but he didn't expect to discuss it with Xiong Tingbi and others, only to find out that the ancestors of the Han people had already invented this method.

In the early years of the Song Dynasty, there was a paragraph in the book "Defending the City": "To destroy the attack tools with artillery, you must use cannons weighing more than 100 catties or 50 or 70 catties." If you want to go far, you must use a small cannon. Only yellow mud is a lump. Each dry weight is five catties, the weight is average, then the object is accurate, and the circle can be put away. The mud clumps will crumble to the ground, and it will not be re-entered into the city for the enemy, and it will be easy to do. Although it is a lump of mud, if the head and face of the person in the middle are the chest, there is no immortal; The siblings of the middle people are all broken. ”

After Lian Zining watched it, he was just amazed.

I was originally looking to use broken bricks, and the bricks had to burn paper, how troublesome was it? The ancestors were smart and tight, and directly used the mud ball, the mud ball is easy to make, and it can be used when it is dried, and under the huge impact, the power of the mud ball is also very great.

These Zi Lian Zining mobilized all the soldiers to make mud balls, and even those wounded soldiers were mixed in, and in these few days, no less than 100,000 were made, and at this time, the city wall was full of piles, like hills.

The soldiers had already filled the spoons at the end of the boom with mud, and these head-sized mud balls were five pounds each, and they all had huge bags, and these bags were all mixed with rattan ropes, and they were not very strong, and there were twenty mud balls in one bag.

Lian Zining gave an order, and the soldiers immediately put down the rope, and the golden wind of the 20,000-pound balance hammer and the roaring golden wind of the crane smashed the other end of the boom.

In the midst of the terrible sound of breaking through the air, huge black objects flew out quickly, and after being thrown by the trebuchet, they flew in the air for a while before they could not bear the weight of the mud inside and broke their ropes.

At this time, the most spectacular scene on the battlefield of Xishenwei appeared!

The rope broke, and the original hundreds of big black shadows suddenly turned into thousands of small black balls, and countless mud balls poured down from the air, forming a rain of bullets covering the surname!

In Lian Zining's view, that scene was similar to the scene when the United States bombed the country at the end of World War II.

There are twenty lumps of mud in one trebuchet, and two thousand in one hundred. You can imagine what it means for the flesh and blood on the ground to suddenly fall in the air in the form of a fan and fall without a safe dead end!

Countless mud balls fell in the array of Jurchen soldiers.

Although their formation is dispersed enough, they are also very dense compared to the mud balls.

Countless mud balls weighing five catties roared down from the sky, and a Jurchen soldier was directly hit in the head, and at that moment he was smashed open with a full head full of flowers, and the whole head was smashed into pieces, red and white splashed everywhere, and skull fragments with broken flesh and hair fell to the ground, and the entire neck became bare, and the head had disappeared. The mud smashed his head, fell to the ground, and was bounced up by the ground that had become very thick and hard because it had not rained for a long time, and smashed on the calf of a Jurchen soldier behind him, only to hear a click, the calf of the Jurchen soldier was broken, he let out a scream, the broken calf could not support the weight of the body, so he leaned forward and knelt on the ground, and the calf was folded to ninety degrees backwards, and the broken bone stubble pierced out from the back of the torn calf.

(To be continued)