When Zheng Yunming returned to Xiangyang with the mighty warship and elite soldiers, Bai Yijie sat in the hall of the deputy capital of Jing'e, staring at the map of Xiangyang's city defense, his eyes were slightly bloodshot. Although Zheng Yunming has not been gone for a long time, the environment inside and outside Xiangyang Mansion has taken a sharp turn for the worse, and the situation in Xiangyang, which was already as stable as Mount Tai, has become precarious again.

The main reason for this was of course very simple, because the Mongols had already plundered some of the resources, although far less than the number they had captured when they first went south to Jinghu, but it was enough to support them to carry out a short siege of Xiangyang again, not to mention that they had requisitioned grain in Henan and Hebei for the first time, and sent troops to escort them to the front. This was a bold and unusual attempt, and during the Central Plains campaign, the Mongols did not have to worry about the source of food and the supply of raw food because of the abundance of settlements and farms. They only managed to crisscross the rich land of Zhongzhou with their mighty nomadic cavalry legions, concentrating on the confrontation with the enemy.

However, after the war with the Song Dynasty, they found that this old method had lost its effect, one of which was that the efficiency of the Song government's actions, although it could be called slow, was much higher than that of the Jin State. The second is that the Yangtze River, mainly the Yangtze River, is full of large and small water systems, which always hinder the advance of the Mongol army, so that they cannot travel hundreds of miles a day as they did in Hebei and Shandong, sweeping the rich cities and manors in a hurry, and plundering a large amount of wealth in a short period of time. Moreover, the people in the border areas of the Song Dynasty have experienced war and have rich combat experience and a courageous and courageous spirit, and the Mongol army often encountered resistance when plundering, even if it could plunder some materials, it would suffer losses.

Based on the lessons learned from last year's southern expedition, before the start of this year's southern expedition, Hao Jing suggested that Qu should arrange for officials to supervise the collection of grain and grass, and then arrange for the army to escort him to the front line. Qu Chu was not careless about the arrangement of this matter, otherwise there would not have been a small part of the grain and grass that had been gathered in advance and was burned by the Song army, and when the army gathered under the city of Xiangyang, it was found that most of the grain and grass had not yet been delivered, so it could only temporarily organize the matter of looting south.

And when Qu sent fast horses to supervise the transportation of grain one after another, a large amount of grain and grass was finally escorted to the Xianghan front, and the Mongol army could finally settle down and seriously prepare for the offensive against Xiangyang. This also means that their long-standing tactics of plundering the countryside to obtain food and using captives to attack cities have been abandoned, and they will gradually accept the traditional offensive tactics of the Central Plains army. This may carry a heavy burden on their backs, but at the same time, it can also provide a huge attack power that nomadic warfare cannot match.

For Zhao Kui, this is not an unfamiliar tactic. In many of the battles he fought against the Jin State, both sides used this mode of attack and defense, not so much as some special strategy, but the Mongols restored the original mode of war in the Central Plains.

It's just that unlike the Jin State, Zhao Kui no longer faces a large number of Han infantry with a small number of elite Han cavalry. Instead, it had to face the first field army in the world, which was almost entirely cavalry, with the Mobei cavalry as the core and the northern Han cavalry as the main force. Their combat effectiveness is far from being comparable to Zhao Kui's opponents in the past.

This time, the prepared Mongol army did not give the Song army any chance, they first uprooted the temporary fortress set up by the Song army at Xiaoshiqiao after the first Xiangyang peripheral battle, killed 330 of the defenders, and then the cavalry surrounded on all sides, and the army even reached the city of Xiangyang, and shouted and shot at the archers across the moat for a long time. Under the strong cavalry curtain, the Mongol artillery army was also able to step up the reconstruction of the artillery carts and fence walls destroyed by the Song people.

Of course, Zhao Kui will not sit still, he sent his subordinate Chen Hui to lead thousands of loyal and righteous troops, to meet the loyal Shun army Meng Jing, Jing Chu army Wang Deng out of the city to take the initiative to attack the enemy, the Song army won the first battle, the enemy retreated slightly, just as Chen Hui was about to lead the army to chase, he was suddenly intercepted by the ironclad cavalry rushing out of the two wings. Hejian and other places of ten thousand households Zhang Rou waved his spear and rushed to the front, he and his subordinates in charge of He Boxiang led a wing of the army, suddenly cut off the attacking Song army, Chen Hui led more than 1,000 people were surrounded in the west of the city and could not return to the city, and later it was the Zhenwu army commander Wang Deng commanded the strict military formation like a mountain, while fighting to the death, while using the general cannon and fire to open the way, step by step swords and guns to fight, inch by inch bloody battle, only then tore open the encirclement of Zhang Rou's cavalry, rescued the few remaining remnants of the battalion, In this battle, the three armies of the Song army were defeated, losing thousands of people, the Song army commander Chen Hui, Meng Jing and Wang Deng were all wounded, Wang Deng was shot in the arm of an arrow, and Zhang Rou on the opposite side was not without losses, under the fierce bombardment of the general artillery, a total of three hundred households were lost, Zhang Rou's own helmet was also concentrated by lead bullets, fortunately his iron pocket was extremely strong, and the lead bullets flew away.

After this battle, the soldiers and civilians of Xiangyang finally understood the true strength of the Mongol army, and they had to rely on the city wall to hold out. To the north of the Han River, Qin Wu, the commander of the Loyal and Righteous Army and the defender of Fancheng, also attacked unfavorably, and was forced to abandon his attempt to rescue the ancient castle after losing hundreds of men. The Mongol army erected dozens of large nine-tip and ten-point artillery carts around the fortress of the ancient castle, and kept bombarding with boulders, and finally collapsed the wooden corner tower in the northeast corner of the ancient castle, and the army attacked the city from here, annihilating all the hundreds of Song troops in the ancient castle.

At the same time, the Mongol army divided its forces and simultaneously attacked a series of fortresses in the Nanshan mountain system. They didn't have time to set up catapults, so they stacked the earth as a slope, occupied a high place to shoot at the castle, erected ladders, erected cowhide cave carts to attack, and after a fierce and short battle, the fortress of Da Xian and a small fortress further south fell, while the fortress of Luhuoling, Niujiao and other fortresses located in the core of the battlefield were still firmly in the hands of the Song army. However, the defenders suffered heavy casualties, and neither the troops nor the courage to support the city of Xiangyang.

Then the Mongol army began to prepare for the siege outside Xiangyang with confidence. This time, Qu Chu made more meticulous preparations than the first siege, he used tens of thousands of people and prisoners to dig a two-zhang wide dry trench outside the city, and erected a wooden fence up to eight feet high behind the dry trench, in order to prevent the Song army from attacking from the city and interfere with the Mongol army's siege plan. Although it is also a good choice to let these Sinan Si's infantry rush out of the city to encircle and annihilate in the field, but after a series of battles, Qu Chu's judgment cannot arbitrarily determine that the Mongolian army has a ten percent chance of winning in the field outside the city, after all, the space that can be deployed is too limited, and the Mongolian cavalry has suffered more than once There is not enough maneuver space outside Xiangyang City to release the maximum combat effectiveness, and he must pursue a foolproof strategy.

First the defenses on the city walls were broken with trebuchets, and then the city was stormed with a large number of soldiers. This is the orthodox siege method learned from the Central Plains. This time, the Mongol army set up more than 100 cannons in the west of the city, all of which were large artillery carts with more than seven tips, and the stones thrown were at least dozens of catties. Standing at the head of Xiangyang City, you can see that the stones prepared for the siege have been piled up into large and small mountains on the artillery positions of the Mongol army. Tens of thousands of Ding Zhuang tugged at the shouting slogans of the commander of the artillery army, and kept shooting the artillery stones at the tall city wall.

If it weren't for the desperate fighting of the defenders in Xiangyang City, who took a flat-bottomed boat out of the city every day to clear the obstacles, I am afraid that the waterway that was vital to Xiangyang would have been cut off by the Mongol army. The young deputy capital commander of the Xiangyang military and civilians who were looking forward to it was difficult for him to return to the city smoothly.

Even if the waterway in Xiangyang is barely smooth, Zheng Yunming's return journey is not without wind and waves, and he arrived safely. The Mongol troops gathered on both sides of the bank kept shooting their bows and arrows at the rapidly advancing oarboats, and the arrows followed these oarboats in the white waves like swarms, and the Mongols even set up crossbows on the shore to intercept them, but there were only a few of them, and the accuracy was not high, and in the end not a single oarboat was not damaged by the huge crossbow arrows.

The Mongol warships also repeatedly approached these Song ships, apparently to reinforce Xiangyang, but they did not seem to have any intention of fighting to the death with these Song oars, and fled as soon as they were fired at by firearms. Because these boats on the Han River played a more important role than intercepting the Song army, they were used as a bridge between the two sides of the strait, and Fancheng in the north, Xiangyang in the south, and the mountains east of the Han River were mixed together, and it would be ridiculous for the Mongol army to block the north-south traffic if these ferries were consumed casually.

When the oarboat, which was full of arrows on the shields on both sides, drove in from the water gate of Xiangyang, it was warmly welcomed by the residents of the city. Not any general of the Song Dynasty had the courage to take the initiative to kill back after leaving a besieged city, but Zheng Yunming, as a new famous general of the Southern Dynasty, naturally had a different style.

Surrounded by soldiers and civilians, Zheng Yunming came all the way to the West Gate and followed the horse road to the head of the West Gate. Here Zhao Kui and the generals have been waiting for a long time.

"I already know the battle of Huilongshan." Zhao Zhizhi smiled and said to Zheng Yunming: "As long as the Mongols can't cross the river with a single soldier, the task entrusted by the state to us and other military attaches can be considered half of the success. ”

Zheng Yunming bowed, raised his head and said, "But the remaining half is the most difficult task. ”

He pointed to the black army under the city and smiled: "Guangwu was just like this in Kunyang back then, right?" ”

The cavalry under the city of Xiangyang is like a cloud, the banners are dense, and the men and horses in black costumes are arranged from half a mile away to the north of the Han River, the west of Tanxi, as far as the eye can see, and the distant skyline is full of Hu cavalry troops.