He was about to make a name for himself in history with an epic outnumbered victory when a loud explosion suddenly hit his ears without warning. The smoke is billowing in the distance, the fire is continuous, the pontoon bridge close to the land on the Ezhou side has been completely blown up, the bridge deck of dozens of zhang has turned into powder, and the broken wood mixed with the stumps flows down the river, the scene is unbearable.

Zheng Yunming completely underestimated Meng Ge's determination to break his wrist, as soon as he saw that the pontoon bridge was not safe, Meng Ge immediately ordered the Mongolian headquarters army and horses to organize a stormtroop and launch a fierce attack on the Song army on the bridge.

This is the decisiveness that a famous general should have. Once the situation was unfavorable, he simply gave up the battle in the direction of Hanyang. The pontoon bridge connected the traffic between Hanyang and Ezhou, and now fell into the hands of Zheng Yunming, that is, the Song Dynasty's horse infantry army could directly cross the river to fight. If the battle site was a flat wilderness, perhaps Meng Ge was not afraid, but would have hoarded troops to prepare for the siege of the city, but the rugged terrain near Ezhou was not conducive to the battle of the cavalry corps. If it is said that it is a battle in formation, it may not be able to defeat the large phalanx of the Song Dynasty, and in the previous battle, the cavalry of the Song army also showed extraordinary combat effectiveness.

Once the situation is found to be unfavorable, resolutely give up certain local interests and ensure the key victory in the key battle, Fang is worthy of being a person who knows the soldiers. Although there were still tens of thousands of people in Hanyang who had not had time to retreat, the Song army would not give up once it seized the pontoon bridge, and they would organize troops to concentrate on cleaning up the Mongolian ships and ships, and on the other hand, they would continue to invest their troops in the defense of the pontoon bridge. The Mongolian army was backed by the Song army's pontoon bridge siege, and it was bound to be attacked from both sides, so the Mongolian army had to shift its focus from the siege to the battle for the pontoon bridge, and this kind of battlefield that required the cooperation of water troops and the narrow combat space was just prepared for the Song army. Meng Ke decisively ordered the pontoon bridge to be blown up, completely blocking the possibility of a direct attack by the Song army from here. In order to rescue Ezhou, the Song army had to use naval ships to transport troops to land near Ezhou, which would inevitably weaken the forces used to fight for surface control, and the remaining Mongol ships would have a chance to counterattack.

Even those generals who have been dealing with Zheng Yunming for ten years, such as Zhang Rou, Yan Zhongji, Liu Wei, etc., have to admire the bearing of the new Great Khan, even if there are only five or six tortoiseshell ships left, Shi Tianze also suffered such a failure, and there is no look of frustration on the face of the Great Khan, he just said lightly: "Zheng Yunming thought that if he broke the tortoiseshell ship, he would be able to put victory in the hunting bag, but he didn't understand that my fleet was just one of my thousand sharp swords, and if I wanted to capture Ezhou, I would dig out his heart!" He shouted at the rejuvenated generals under his command: "Listen to me all, within three days, Ezhou City must be captured!" ”

Meng Ge's order is not a wild word, and the current shape of Ezhou is not to say that it has reached the last moment, and it is already crumbling. The continuous heavy artillery bombardment has opened more than a dozen gaps in the Ezhou city wall, and in several gaps, the Outer Mongolian army has paid huge casualties and has built shelter fortifications, and it is almost impossible for the light artillery and fire guns of the Song army to directly kill and injure the Mongolian army outside the city wall. The opportunity for a general assault on Ezhou has arrived.

In order to prepare for the final general attack, Meng Ke Khan stubbornly suppressed his blood for a quick victory, and made serious preparations, he transferred 50,000 horses from the Zhulu army and horses in Jiangbei, and handed them over to Mo Gedu to command, and crossed the river to participate in the general offensive operation. The artillery and artillery wagons in the camp were concentrated, and ammunition for them to use in three days of fierce fighting was stored, and they were used to concentrate on attacking the temporary fortifications and earthen walls built by the Song army in the gap. In order to ensure that the army could not be replenished with ammunition and bows and arrows in time after entering the city, the Great Khan personally ordered his subordinates to select 10,000 people as a transport team, ready to listen to the call of the generals in front of him. The Great Khan personally summoned a good doctor from the Western Regions and ordered the Vultures to prepare for the huge casualties caused by the general attack.

Of course, the most important step in preparation was that the Great Khan summoned Tachar, the commander-in-chief of the Cowardly Snow, and selected 10,000 death squads from the Cowardly Xue Guards and the Proton Army to serve as the arrows of the general attack. The Mongol army's siege method has always been that the alien race is the first, and the Chinese people are only used in the most critical attacks, but the cowardly Xue and the proton army generally rarely participate in the siege operations with huge consumption.

On the other side of the city wall, Wei Sheng's situation was quite difficult. The huge casualties of the soldiers are only part of the predicament, the damage of the city wall is the biggest problem, even if Wei Sheng is a brave and capable general, it is just relying on the strong walls of Ezhou and the huge enemy to maintain the balance of power, and now the intermittent city walls that have been bombarded have become useless, and every attack of the Mongol army has brought more casualties than at the beginning of the battle, and only the last two or three attacks have caused more than 1,000 casualties to the Song army. Such a fierce offensive, even Wei Sheng's subordinates were inevitably shaken, and in the latest engagement, Wei Sheng had to personally execute a lieutenant general he had always trusted, just because he was shocked by the huge casualties, and ordered the front-line soldiers to retreat to save a little strength, which almost caused the battle line to be shaken. This kind of thing was something Wei Sheng had never seen in Zheng Yunming's army.

Also tight is the supply of military supplies in Ezhou, where all military supplies such as grain, gunpowder, etc., which were originally important in the four major towns, must be stockpiled to support the use of more than three years. For Jinghu, which has just undergone economic innovation and industrial factories are in the ascendant, this was originally an easy task. However, after Jia Rudao took office, he focused on replenishing Xiangyang, where his cronies were stationed, and constantly transferred reserve materials from the remaining three towns, and Jinghu had not fought for three years, so the army and civilians were a little slack. The fierce fighting in Sichuan and Yunnan continued, and the materials and soldiers of Ezhou also continued to reinforce the rest of the theater, and the result was that when Ezhou faced hundreds of thousands of Hu troops who suddenly descended, it actually did not have how to fully prepare materials.

Dozens of days of fierce fighting have exhausted Ezhou's small reserves, but the grain is not much, and there is no problem in supporting it for three years, but the problem is gunpowder and arrows. Lu Wenhuan already had the intention of rebellion, so he used various excuses to transfer a large amount of gunpowder and projectiles and arrows from Ezhou, and Wei Sheng's army's combat habits were to use a large number of firearms to support his army, and the consumption of gunpowder arrows was two to three times more than that of the rest of the units, although Wei Sheng knew that the situation was not good as soon as he entered Ezhou City, so he ordered to strictly control the use of ammunition and arrows, but once an army's combat habits were formed, it was impossible to change overnight. Although Wei Sheng believed that his troops would be able to do their duty faithfully and fight to the last man even when they did not have firearms, at this point in the fortune of the Great Song Dynasty, no one could afford to lose Ezhou again.

The day when the Mongol army launched a general offensive later became one of the classic fragments in the historical commentary of the Song Dynasty, and the most commonly used description of this paragraph in the commentary is the eight words "arrows cover the sky and thunder shakes the earth". Later generations mostly took this as an exaggeration, but from the perspective of the front-line Song army soldiers, this is not too much, many years later, there are veterans who are shocked to talk about the lightness of the year, the rain of arrows in the sky falls to every corner of the city, and the huge stone projectiles of the Shenwu cannon smash one or several mansions from time to time. The smoke inside and outside the city was so thick that even the enemy artillery positions in the distance could not be seen clearly, and in the white fog, only earth-shattering horns were heard, and then thunderous shouts of killing were heard.

The Mongol army, led by the cowardly Xue guards, simultaneously began to attack more than a dozen gaps in Ezhou. Wei Sheng was not unprepared for this day, the increase in the number and banners of the Mongols outside the city, the increase in the number of artillery vehicles, and the intensive artillery fire all heralded the arrival of a final general attack. The battle was unprecedentedly fierce from the beginning of the morning assault until noon, but the two sides were able to maintain a stalemate and the Mongols had only advanced a few hundred paces with a mountain of corpses piled up in the gap. But Möngke Khan was not at all shaken by the heavy losses, and the Mongol army formed hundreds of attack teams to attack the Song army at various gaps, giving the defenders no time to breathe.

This is a strangulation battle with human flesh and blood as bargaining chips, in the face of such a round of assaults, even Wei Sheng, even Wei Sheng's victorious army, finally began to be unable to support, in the afternoon, the Mongol army made progress in several gaps in the southwest and southeast of the city, repelled the Song army defending in front of the city, and rushed into the streets and alleys to start a street battle with the Song Dynasty soldiers and civilians.

Wei Sheng's reaction was extremely quick and very personal, he immediately gathered the guards around him, personally led the back army to launch a counterattack, Wei Dutong's iron cone gun and black horn bow are the Mongolian army's fearful weapons, and now with the addition of the crow fire, in the streets and alleys of the death, the role of a brave general is greater than hundreds of people, Wei Sheng in front of the result of fighting to the death, that is, the Mongolian army can not resist, one after another from the occupied streets and alleys.

Such a situation deeply stimulated the horse Jun Buhua, he since Shanggui Khan's eldest daughter Yeli was lost, did not make an inch of merit, and was ridiculed behind his back as a shepherd horse, this time Meng Gongnan sent him with the army, giving him a valuable opportunity to make meritorious contributions. Now looking at Wei Sheng's appearance in the Mongolian army, he was not angry in his heart, and shouted, "Little Baturu!" This General Sinan Si is so arrogant, he clearly bullied our Mongolian army and has no brave generals! Come with me, I want him to see if the Mongol army can have anything else, and the most important thing is brave warriors! ”