readx; The sunset in Anxi was like blood, and in the Tibetan camp, the fierce drums were still beating 'Bang!' Boom! At the sound of the sound, 15,000 Tibetan troops rushed like a frenzy and came to the end of the city, which was already the third siege of the Tibetan army in three days. Pen ~ fun ~ pavilion www.biquge.info

On the first day of the tentative attack, the Tubo army failed to break through the dense arrow rain of the Tang army, and was defeated and retreated with hundreds of dead and wounded.

After two temptations, the Tibetans had understood the Tang army's defensive routine, far away with trebuchets and bed crossbows, and close to the bow and arrow defense, at this time, Shang Jiasu got the news that another 20,000 reinforcements from Luo had arrived in the Tibetan camp.

The arrival of 20,000 reinforcements greatly boosted the morale of the Tubo army, with the confidence of 20,000 people, Shang Jiasu also increased his confidence, so that he had 50,000 troops, he could concentrate his forces, and conquer the castles of the Tang army one by one, at this time his spies also came with the news that there were not many defenders in Khotanese military town, that is, as long as the town of Jimo was taken, the entire south of the Tulun Desert would be occupied by the Tubo army, and the gate of Anxi would be opened.

It was the arrival of 20,000 reinforcements that made Shang Jiasu determined to take the city at all costs.

In the drumbeat of the rumbling attack, the 15,000 Tubo army was divided into three phalanxes, and advanced to the front of the Tang army together, the number was dense, and from the heights, the black Tubo army was densely packed, like an ant colony, covering the land outside the end of the city.

"Forward!" To the sound of drums, the Tibetan general shouted, "Kill into the city!" ”

........ "Forward!" ”

In the roar of rolling thunder, the Tubo army advanced towards the end of the city like a mountain and a sea, this time the Tubo army used a lot of siege weapons, first of all, the raft, that is, ten big trees trapped together, these big trees are poplars cut from the nearby oasis, straight and long, each big tree is four or five zhang long, retain its branches, after they are densely tied, it becomes a temporary trestle, so that the Tubo army can rush through the moat, hundreds of Tubo troops run on a raft, it can also resist the bow and arrow of the Tang army and the bed crossbow.

The second is the leather bucket, which was originally the Han people's defensive weapon against the rolling wood and stone, and now it has also been learned by the Tibetan people, the so-called leather bucket is a kind of shelf made of rough wood, covered with several layers of cowhide, the cowhide is coated with thick grease, slippery, and has a certain angle, when the boulder hits the cowhide, it is easy to be unloaded and slided, although not every boulder can be defended, but at least can defend against forty percent of the boulder flying.

A leather bucket is three zhang wide and five zhang long, and there is a wooden wheel underneath it, which can be pushed slowly, while under a leather bucket there are three or four hundred Tibetan soldiers hiding.

Amid the sound of war drums, the 15,000 Tibetan army was launched, and the rafts, leather buckets, long ladders and the mighty Tibetan army converged into a spectacular black tide rushing towards the city.

At the head of the city, the Tang army was ready, the east and west rows of twenty heavy trebuchets creaked apart, and a hundred and ten pounds of boulders were placed in the leather pocket, each trebuchet needed one hundred and fifty people to pull, the Tang army could not divide so many troops, so it was commanded by the Tang army, and the three thousand people in the end of the city were responsible for pulling the trebuchet.

The Tibetan army is getting closer and closer, and has entered the 800-step line, if it is a super-large trebuchet of 200 people, it can be projected, but the trebuchet of the end of the city is slightly smaller, the range is only 500 to 600 steps away, the Tang general who is responsible for commanding the trebuchet is Lang General Luo Shengjun, which is also a practical combat general who has stepped into the position of general step by step by a small soldier, he is the defender of Sabi City, and was ordered by He Lou Yurun to burn down Sabi City and withdraw to the end of the city.

Luo Shengjun watched the offensive wave of the Tubo army approaching the city step by step, the front of the army had reached seven hundred steps, the bed crossbow of the Tang army had been shot, three hundred four-foot-long iron arrows and countless dense small arrows were shot at the Tubo army together, a group of people in the Tubo army turned over on their backs, hundreds of Tubo soldiers were shot down, and the strong shooting ** tempted Luo Shengjun, but the red flag in his hand was never waved, the red flag was not waved, and the twenty Tang army commanders did not dare to give the order to shoot.

Six hundred steps, the Tubo army finally entered the range of the trebuchet, and the red flag in Luo Shengjun's hand finally waved down, "Shoot!" Twenty commanders of the Don Army shouted almost simultaneously.

The heavy trebuchet was activated, and twenty long throwing rods swung out, smashing twenty huge stones into the Tibetan camp, and the boulders made a sharp whistling sound, rolled in the air, and appeared above the heads of the Tibetan army with great speed, and the Tibetan soldiers shouted and dodged to both sides, or burrowed into the leather bucket.

'Boom! With a muffled sound, the boulder fell, the dust flew, several Tubo soldiers couldn't dodge, and were smashed into meat sauce, the strong impact force made the boulder continue to roll, and rushed straight into the Tubo soldiers, and suddenly there was a scream, more than a dozen soldiers were killed, blood and water splashed, and the whole boulder was dyed red.

There was another loud noise, a boulder hit the leather bucket, a 'bang' sound, the slippery leather bucket made the boulder that had worn off the edges and corners unable to hit solidly, and slipped out more than 20 steps, this boulder did not achieve the effect.

However, not every boulder can withstand the leather bucket, it depends on the smoothness of the stone itself, if the stone is rough and hairy, then the leather bucket will be difficult to exert its effect.

There was another muffled sound, accompanied by the cracking sound of the bracket, a leather bucket was smashed, hundreds of Tibetan soldiers hiding under the leather bucket stumbled and crawled out, and many people were injured by the collapsed wooden pillars, moaning in pain under the leather bucket.

The second round of trebuchets was launched again, and twenty boulders rolled in the air, whistling and smashing, smashing the Tibetan soldiers on their backs, flesh and blood flying, the leather buckets were broken, and the rafts were broken, followed by the third and fourth rounds..... There are hundreds of casualties in each round of stone throwing, although the power of the trebuchet is huge, but after all, the number is small, can not form a huge lethality, more than 10,000 Tubo army has rushed to the city, the Tang army on the city ten thousand arrows are fired, the arrows are like hail rain, overwhelmingly shoot towards the Tubo army.

The Tibetan army raised their shields to greet each other, and constantly people were killed by arrows, and in the rain of arrows, thousands of Tibetan soldiers will be several zhang long rafts 'boom!' The ground was erected on the moat, forming more than 20 temporary tree bridges, a wide ladder eight zhang high set up the head of the city, a group of fierce Tubo soldiers rushed up the ladder and began to climb upward, the Tang army's arrow rain came obliquely, rolling wood and stones fell head-on, a string of Tubo soldiers screamed and fell down the stairs, their bodies were shot by arrows, their heads were smashed, and the dead bodies under the city wall were piled up, and then there were Tibetan soldiers who frantically climbed the stairs and charged upwards desperately.

At this time, the drums in the Tibetan camp were loud again, and there were 10,000 Tibetan cavalry galloping in, dusty, they used the fastest speed through the range area of the boulder and the bed crossbow from 400 to 800 paces, the boulder roared, smashed the cavalry over a piece, the bed crossbow arrow was strong and fast, an arrow could shoot through two or three people, the war horse neighed, the soldiers rolled, under the boulder, there were miserable corpses and blood everywhere.

At this moment, the Tibetan army has invested 25,000 siege soldiers, and the siege and defense of the city have entered the most intense stage.

．．．．．．．． On the third day of the siege of the end of the city, the 40,000 main cavalry of the Tang army had arrived at Puchanghai, which was about 500 miles away from the end of the city, and Puchanghai was today's Lop Nur, and the Lop Nur of the Tang Dynasty was still a vast ocean, and the salinity was not as great as it is today, and there were poplar trees and shrubs with extremely tenacious life growing around.

The Puchanghai of the Tang Dynasty is the southern branch of the Silk Road on the western route, from Shazhou out of Yangguan to the west to walk three hundred miles to Puchanghai, and then along the end of the river to the southwest, you can arrive at the end of the city, on the way there is a vast oasis, is an important supply place for merchants and the army, that is, today's Ruoqiang County, Xinjiang Province, the Tang army built four small cities such as crossbow branch, Dianhe, Putao and Qitun there, became an important military base of the Tang army, the history of Tianbao 11 years of the battle of Boxian Town in Tubo took place here.

When Li Qing'an's 40,000 troops arrived at this oasis, the sky was gradually dark, and the 30,000 Tang troops came non-stop from Longyou, and it had been nearly a month.

In the night, the tired soldiers of the Tang Army have fallen asleep, only more than 1,000 patrol sentries patrol around the camp, in the camp, Li Qing'an's main general tent is still brightly lit, a huge sand table with a width of three zhang and a length of five zhang has been put together, placed in the middle of the big tent, this sand table includes the entire Anxi army except for Xinde, which is nearly a thousand Anxi scouts took a year to make.

Li Qing'an and several generals with the army were discussing the military situation next to the sand table, this time Li Qing'an returned from Longyou, and did not go to the plateau south of Qilian Mountain, but passed through the Dadou Pull Valley, and entered Ganzhou, because of a circle, their march was a few days late, but Li Qing'an took into account the combat effectiveness and supplies of the Tang army, so after the 30,000 Tang army entered Hexi, he brought 50,000 war horses, and at the same time, Lifei Shouyu in Hexi divided 10,000 elites to follow Li Qing'an to Anxi.

Li Qing'an stood in front of the sand table and pondered for a long time, he was thinking about the whole battle situation, and the battle of the end of the city was only a part of the whole battle situation, he already knew that the Hui invaded the lair of the Qarlu people, and almost killed the Qarlu people, but in the south, there were seven castles built by the Tang army, Yili City and Gongyue City for defense, and there were 20,000 troops in the north, and it was difficult for the Hui cavalry to break through this defensive line.

He had ordered the 60,000 Sanhu coalition troops to divide into two routes, one route was for the Qarlu army to take the north of Jinshan to intercept the retreat of the Hui people, and the other route was to go south of Jinshan to Xuanchi with the Luo army and the Shatuo army, and intercept the Hui army from entering Beiting from the front, but in order to prevent the Hui people from taking the opportunity to attack Beiting, Cui Qianyou's 6,000 Han troops stayed in Beiting.

In a sense, it was also in line with his expectation that the Qarluqs would be slaughtered, and that they would let these steppe Hu people kill each other.

Although Anxi encountered a north-south attack, the situation was very bad, but Li Qing'an also found some subtleties of the enemy's large-scale attack, mainly that the invaders' troops were not many, and the Hui only sent 30,000 people, this kind of dispatch is not like a strategic attack, and it has a little bit of the meaning of taking advantage of the fire to rob, which also confirms Li Qing'an's judgment that after years of weakening, the Hui army has been unable to launch a large-scale war of aggression against Tang, so it can only send 30,000 people to carry out a kind of robber sneak attack.

Compared with the southern invasion of the Hui army, Li Qing'an paid more attention to the Tubo army's attack on Anxi, obviously, this and the Tubo army's attack on Longyou is complementary to each other, this is the consistent strategy of the Tubo army, several times to launch a campaign to invade the Tang Dynasty, the Tubo people are often the east and west two fronts at the same time, from the Tubo army sent 30,000 troops to attack and the end of the city, the number seems to be a little less, they are very likely to have other strategic attempts.

At this time, the general An Baozhen whispered on the side: "General, there is a suggestion for the humble position. ”

An Baozhen is the younger brother of Yulin General An Baoyu, only twenty-four years old this year, young and promising, he was seventeen years old in the Longyou army, followed Li Guangbi to Anxi together, from a team is slowly accumulating merit to be promoted to Zhonglang General, won Li Guangbi's love, this time Li Qingan returned from Longyou West, Li Guangbi divided 10,000 troops to follow, he recommended An Baozhen to Li Qingan.

Li Qingan also admired this young general, so he nodded and smiled: "Say it!" ”

An Baozhen has been following Li Guangbi in Tocharo, and he knows the situation over there very well, so he bowed down and said: "General, I suspect that the main force of the Tubo army is to attack Tocharo, after General Li returned to Longyou from Tocharo, the Tang army of Tocharian is only 8,000 people, mainly stationed in several large silver mines, Tocharian only has more than 40,000 local troops, their combat effectiveness is very weak, they will not be the opponent of the Tubo army, and the Tubo army is attacking and ending, I am worried that their ultimate goal is Shule, occupy Shule, and cut off the Tang army of Anxi to support Tocharo, please consider the general. ”

Li Qing'an didn't speak, in fact, he thought of this possibility, now the power of the Tang army has extended from Beiting to the west to the river, and to the south to Xinde, if he is Tubo Zampu, then if you want to compete with the Tang army for a long time, then you must choose the most favorable root base, Tocharian is undoubtedly the best choice, to the north can break the leaves, to the west can attack the river, to the east can occupy Anxi, to the south can go down to Xinde, and it is connected to the mountains and rivers of the Tubo Plateau, even if you can't hold it, you can return to the plateau, in addition, Tocharian is rich in grain, and it can also provide a steady stream of logistical supplies for the Tibetan army.

Thinking of this, he took a few small red flags, and planted the big Bolu and Tocharian in turn, the reason why he didn't insert the small Bolu was because he knew that the Tubo army could not cross the Suoyi River.

Li Qing'an had already affirmed the strategy of the Tubo army's westward expedition, and it was right to fight Anxi as a supplement, and to fight Tochar.

At this time, a report from a patrol officer came from outside the door, "General, our patrol team has found two Tang soldiers in the wilderness fifty miles away, both of them are seriously wounded and very weak, but they say that they have important information to report to the general. ”

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(To be continued)