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The siege battle was originally supposed to be a huge earthwork project no less than building a city. The Mongols did not understand this truth at first, so they were unable to attack the fortified cities of Zhongjing, Yanjing, Taiyuan and Fengxiang for a long time. However, after many years of experience in the Central Plains, they learned that they must mobilize enough manpower to capture the city.

Therefore, when attacking Bianliang, the Mongols captured countless people from Henan Prefecture and counties and threw them into the siege battle, and finally swept away the fortifications and moats on the periphery of Bianjing. Only then did Bianliang City lose its defensive value. But this time they attacked Jinghu, but they miscalculated. Zheng Yunming's understanding of the four words of Jianbi Qingye is far more profound than that of any general except him in this era. Today's generals, such as Meng Heng, built simple cottages outside the city to accommodate the peasants and landlords outside the city, sent some unimportant old and weak soldiers to assist in the defense, and the lazy Qingye was not serious, and allowed these villagers to continue to live in their own houses, so the houses were burned, the grain was robbed, and the villagers became cannon fodder for the Mongols to build fortresses and fill in trenches. There were even more unscrupulous generals who regarded the fortified wall as a means of personal wealth and a means to boost the morale of the army, and before the Mongols came to rob, they looted their own villagers in the name of the fortified wall.

But Zheng Yunming is never like this, in another time and space, Zheng Yunming has seen the power of Jianbi Qingye more than once, even if the French emperor is a genius and a natural military strategist, he can't compete with the gritted teeth of the Rus' Jianbi Qingye. The strong wall and clear wilderness are compared to the willpower of a country and the willpower of a nation, and it is precisely in this respect that the Song people are much better than those criticized by many descendants. But these were not enough to deal with the Mongol invasion, and Zheng Yunming wanted to raise the fortified walls of this era to an unprecedented height. He strictly ordered that all the houses, fields, and warehouses that were exposed to protection in Jinghu Prefecture should be abandoned, and all property and food should be transferred, and the soldiers should be strictly restrained, and special attention should be paid to protecting the private property of the common people. In addition, all the tiles, doors and windows of the house were removed and transported, the wells were blocked with stones, the roads were dug up, the bridges were demolished, in short, the Mongols really did not get any people, money and land, he handed over this matter to Bai Yijie to be personally responsible, and Bai Yijie also urged his subordinates day and night to carry out this task seriously, and he couldn't even take care of his home. In Wei Ruolan's complaints, the Jinghu fortified wall Qingye personally led by the Bai Army Division was carried out extremely thoroughly, so that the Mongolian army went south this time, and did not even see a single old man or child near Xiangfan, let alone kidnap adult males as hard labor.

And the servants they themselves brought here from the Central Plains were insufficient, at least for the siege of a large western city like Xiangyang, not to mention that they also had to attack Fancheng and the fortresses around Xiangyang. Originally, Tath's idea was to take tens of thousands of people in the left vicinity of Xiangyang to serve as laborers in the earthwork industry on the basis of the husband's service carried by the army. The harvest along the way is tens of thousands of people. But what caught him off guard was that this year, there were almost 10,000 people in the left vicinity of Xiangyang, and the Tanma Red Army reported that except for a few large cottages with dangerous terrain and extremely tight defenses, there was not a single living person in the wild.

That's because last year Zheng Yunming was just the head of a cottage, and this year Zheng Yunming is already in charge of the entire Jinghu area. Last year, he was an excellent tactical pawn in the overall strategy of the Song army, and this year he has become a chess player who plans the overall situation.

"They should have brought enough men to bear the siege when they went south." Zheng Yunming raised his hand to cover the autumn sun, looked at the busy construction site in the distance, and said to Zhao Kui: "Doesn't the Central Plains army have to carry a large number of craftsmen and servants with them? ”

"It's a habit." Zhao Kui said slowly, as if teaching his students: "The Mongols did not have a city in the desert, and they had no concept of siege warfare, and they really learned siege after invading the Central Plains." However, the Mongols were accustomed to fighting on horseback, and it was very convenient to take the rural dwellers captive, and over time, it became a fixed tactic to take the peasants from the outskirts of the city as a husband without carrying them. But they didn't expect to meet Shumou's thorough Qingye. ”

"We will never let the enemy get a husband and a grain from the left side of Xiangfan." Zheng Yunming said firmly: "I would like to see how much power the cavalry he is proud of can exert when every labor and grain of Tath is transferred from thousands of miles away. ”

Zhao Kui held the pheasant with one hand, and looked at the rolling crowd in the west: "Don't talk too much, you see that Ta Si would rather use soldiers and auxiliaries as husband service, but also insist on building the necessary fortifications, you know that this time he is determined to pull out the thorn in the eye of Xiangyang." He erected a fence on the ground a mile from the city gate, and dug a trench outside the fence, and inside the fence there was an earthen wall, apparently to prevent our troops from breaking through. He sent people to the east to block the waterway connecting the moat to the Han River, hoping to dry up the water of the moat. He built high platforms to the west and south of the city, apparently determined to start a real artillery battle with us in the southwest. ”

Zheng Yunming nodded and said, "The enemy has realized the problem in the artillery battle a few days ago, and they are also adjusting their tactics and focusing their attacks on the city wall southwest of Xiangyang. ”

The Mongols' artillery tactics were a big problem from the beginning, and Tath saw the problem. The target they were targeting was not the city wall but the trebuchet in the city, but when the trebuchets of the two armies bombarded each other, because of the relationship of vision, the artillery of the Song army was the dominant side, so that even if the Mongol army surpassed the Song army in terms of quantity and quality, the trebuchet's bombardment was still at a disadvantage.

Tath decisively reversed this futile confrontation and targeted all the trebuchets on the city wall in the southwest corner of Xiangyang. It was originally the business of trebuchets to bombard the city walls with trebuchets, as long as they braved the bombardment of the Song people's trebuchets to blast a gap in the city wall and throw soldiers into the city. The Song army's advantage over the city wall is gone, do you still need to worry about the disadvantage of artillery and stone bombardment? Therefore, the artillery army spent three full days to transfer the position of the artillery trucks and use them to bombard the city wall in the southwest corner of Xiangyang.

But it was impossible for him to break through the city defenses in the southwest corner. When Zheng Yunming rebuilt Xiangyang City, he paid more attention to the four corners than the city gate. The walls of all four corners were laid with blue bricks, and the double-layered city bricks were wrapped, transforming the original humble corner tower into a tall and magnificent three-story city tower. Its six corner towers are called Kuimu, Doumu, Jingmu, Kangjin, Niu Jin and Jiaomu, and take the names of the four directions in the 28 constellations.

The tall corner towers are built purely of brick and wood, and none of the large window lattices and cornices used for aesthetics are used. Its architectural form is closer to that of a traditional Chinese fortress, with narrow observation and shooting holes in the brick walls. It is precisely because of such a simple and practical design that the Kuimu Building was smashed in the face of the repeated bombardment of hundreds of enemy heavy trebuchets, but the body of the building was still indestructible, and the observers and the set let go hid in the building, commanding the trebuchets in the city to continue to counterattack, and the trebuchets clustered in the southwest corner, but the effect of the counterattack was not good. The reason is also obvious, the range of the trebuchets in the city is not enough, the range of the trebuchets in the city is not as good as the heavy trebuchets built by the Mongols, the target of the Mongols' trebuchets is mainly the city wall, they only need to cover the city wall into the range. They hid outside the range of the trebuchets in the city to shoot safely, but the Song army was helpless against them.

But fortunately, even the fifteen-level cannon shot more than 100 catties of boulders is helpless against the tall city wall with double bricks. The city walls stood still under the bombardment of flying stones, just like a real golden city. The flying stones that fell and bounced off the city walls even formed a hill at the foot of the city walls. But all the efforts were to make small holes in the surface of the city walls.

"When will it take for such a bombardment to collapse a section of the wall?" Bai Yijie said to Zheng Yunming: "After the city wall collapses, they still have to face the well-defended corner city, which is a new city wall, and the war will drag on for a year." ”

"We don't have a problem here, even if we last a year, there will be enough food in the city." Zheng Yunming said: "But the other side may not be. ”

His words hit the nail on the head of the Mongol army. The Mongols were not accustomed to carrying grain and grass when they went south, and their soldiers could carry cattle and sheep with the army, or eat air-dried beef as dry food, but most of the supplies still came from plundering, and the Han army, Jurchen army, and Khitan barbarian army that accompanied the army were completely dependent on supplies looted from the territory of the Song Dynasty. If last year was a very successful strategy, this year's situation is completely different from last year. Except for digging up some old grain in the crypt that the Song people had no time to take away, the Mongol army had almost nothing to gain near Xiangfan. The grain of Jinghu was either hidden in the large cottages in the difficult terrain, and in order to obtain these grains and the necessary servants, it was necessary to risk huge casualties to attack these cottages. Or there is only one option left, to break Xiangyang City and get a mountain of grain from its newly built treasury.

But neither approach was realistic for the Mongols.

"So the time for more than 100,000 of them to gather under the city is running out." Zheng Yunming said: "Either retreat the army to Dengzhou and Tangzhou to wait for grain and grass, or adopt last year's strategy to besiege Xiangyang with one group, and the rest of the people will plunder downstream along the Han River." ”