(6,000 words update, I want to eat and drink at night, there is no change today, please vote red)

The main city of Xiangyang faces the mountains and rivers, and the north city wall is next to the cliffs on the south bank of the Han River, and the south city wall is almost close to the northern slope of the Xian Mountain at the northern foot of Lumen Mountain.

After entering the middle of November, the key points on the periphery of Xiangyang City, such as Moqi Mountain, Hutoushan Island, and Da Xian Mountain, were captured by the Huaidong Army one by one, and nearly 70,000 enemy troops were completely blocked in Xiangyang City.

The generals of the Huaidong Army, their soldiers and the people accompanying the army, braved the severe cold weather to dig two trenches from Moqi Mountain to Da Xian Mountain, and completely besieged the enemy army in Xiangyang City; After the moat, from Moqi Mountain to Da Xian Mountain, to Hutou Mountain Island, and then to Wanjian Mountain, Yingpanzhai and Qiao Aochong, the camps of the Huaidong Army are interlocking, standing at a height of ten thousand zhang and looking down, perhaps you can see a dense fish scale-like pattern from the southwest side to envelop Xiangyang City.

From Bianshan Mountain to the northern slope of Da Xian Mountain, thousands of people blew their hands and faces to the ground in spite of the wind and snow, and in just six days, they opened up a ten-mile-long Yong road, so that they could directly erect heavy stone-throwing crossbows to the cliff head on the northern slope of Da Xian Mountain, and could directly attack the southern city wall of Xiangyang 400 steps away.

From the period of Luo Xiancheng according to Suizhou, the two cities of Xiangfan were empty, Luo Xiancheng occupied them to fight against Jinghu and Nanyang, and the luxury family took over Xiangfan from Luo Xiancheng to wait for the soldiers and horses of Beiyan to go south, all of which were purely military fortresses, in addition to garrisons, there were only thousands of small soldiers who surrendered to the rebels and lived in the city.

Whether it was the rebellion against Zhou Fan or Han Li, or Pu Jieshi or Tong Ruilin, they all understood that Ye Ji Luorong and Chen Zhihu had retreated to Guanzhong at this time, and they had already abandoned them in Xiangyang.

In Xichuan, Wuguan and Shangzhou, there is a serious shortage of grain and grass; Without grain and grass, no matter how many soldiers and horses there is, there is no way to confront the Huaidong Army according to the danger of the Qinling Mountains - everyone understands this truth, but Ye Ji Luorong and Chen Zhihu led eighty or ninety thousand soldiers and horses to retreat to Guanzhong, and before spreading out the Xiangyang soldiers and horses, it is a desperate road with no hope in sight, even if they want to break through, they don't know where to go, even if they want to surrender, they also understand that they are full of blood, and there is no way to survive if they fall.

At the beginning of November, the negative effect of the battle of Miaotanling was also visible to the lowest generals. Isolated from Xiangyang soldiers and horses, and Ye Ji Luorong and Chen Zhihu's troops had to retreat north to Guanzhong because of grain and grass, the flank of the Huaidong Army was not threatened, so it advanced to Xiangyang City in an orderly manner, and it took almost half a month to force it to the periphery of Xiangyang City. For the enemy soldiers in Xiangyang, this process is that the space for struggle is getting narrower and narrower.

When any degree of breakthrough was severely attacked by the Huaidong Army, there was no direction and exit for the breakthrough, and in fact, before Xiangyang City was encircled, tens of thousands of enemy soldiers who were forced to retreat to Xiangyang City were filled with despair.

Even if there is a trapped beast fighting, but the trapped beast that cannot see the hope of life and escape will not have the will to continue to struggle. Even if there is a dying struggle, the dying who cannot see the hope of life and escape will only sit in vain and despair and wait for death.

In late November, the Huaidong Army formed a joint encirclement of Xiangyang, and from the 22nd onwards, it set up heavy stone-throwing crossbows on the northern slope of Da Xian Mountain to bombard Xiangyang City.

The clay pots were smashed on the city walls or the corners of the eaves, and leaflets like snowflakes flew all over the sky. Although most of the enemy soldiers were illiterate, as long as they were literate, the contents of the leaflets quickly spread throughout the city.

The surrendered army that participated in the massacres in Nanyang and Pengwanling, from Tian Chang, Han Li, below the battalion general, and above the battalion general, a total of 123 people, including Pujieshi and Tong Ruilin, were included in the first-class war criminals; Other captive generals, officers of the centurion or above of the subordinate army, and civil servants appointed by the puppet Yan at or above the county level are classified as second-class war criminals, and other officers of the subordinate army and ordinary civil servants are third-class war criminals.

The leaflet did not mention the disposition of first-class war criminals by Huaidong, but the second-class and lower war criminals were allowed to surrender before the 30th day to be exempted from the death penalty, but they would be sentenced to five to twenty years of exile and hard labor, and the second-class and lower war criminals were allowed to assassinate first-class war criminals to pay for their crimes. Ordinary soldiers will be sentenced to three to ten years of exile and hard labor; Yang Xiong, who attached himself to the luxury family and then surrendered to Yanhu but did not kill, led the remnants to surrender, and the generals of Yang Xiong's department beheaded the first-class war criminals and left the city......

The opinions of Song Fu, Gao Zongting and others were originally to lure the enemy out and surrender before liquidation, but Lin Jian did not adopt it.

The booby trap plan can no longer be repeated.

This time, when the booby trap strategy is used to carry out the Northern Expedition, the booby trap plan will be ineffective, and on the contrary, it will block the southern retreat of those who were forced to surrender to Yan but did not commit great evils, but there is absolutely no possibility of forgiving the crimes of the rebel generals and captive generals who committed great evils, especially those who participated in the massacre of civilians.

Some radical generals in the Huaidong Army even wanted to slaughter all the enemy soldiers trapped in Xiangyang.

However, there is no need to trap and kill all the enemies in Xiangyang, the resistance is too great, and it will add many unnecessary casualties to the Huaidong army itself. And this liquidation will set a precedent for the Northern Expedition in the future, and Lin Jian also asked Song Fu and Gao Zongting to consider it carefully.

In the end, the collegial conclusion was that the punishment should be divided into three classes, and the generals of the subordinate army, the generals of the captive army, and some civil servants would be convicted in three classes. Because the banner of the enemy troops trapped in Xiangyang was clear, it was confirmed that Tian Chang and Han Li's troops had participated in the Nanyang and Pengwanling massacres, and it took more than ten days to interrogate from the mouths of the existing prisoners of war that a total of 123 enemy generals who participated in the Nanyang and Pengwanling and the repeated battles of Yanhu's southern invasion were listed as first-class war criminals who must be executed. Other rebel and captured generals, listed as second- and third-class war criminals.

Yang Xiong's department is listed separately, first, Yang Xiong's department has not participated in the massacre since he demoted the luxury family and joined the luxury family to Yanhu; Second, out of the actual need of attacking the city, it was necessary to list the remnants of Yang Xiong separately to further divide the enemy army in Xiangyang, so as to reduce the resistance to attack Xiangyang after 30 days.

After Yang Xiong's warships were completely destroyed by the Huaidong Naval Army, nearly 4,000 soldiers still retreated to Xiangyang City, entrenched in the northwest corner of Xiangyang, which was not a particularly powerful force among the enemy troops trapped in Xiangyang City.

However, Lin Jian intended to punish one hundred and twenty-three first-class war criminals, all of whom were high-ranking generals in Xiangyang City, and under the control of these enemy generals, it was difficult for the low-level military attaches and ordinary soldiers in the enemy army to get out of the city even if they had the intention to surrender - then Yang Xiong's department was also a back door for these low-level military attaches and soldiers of the enemy army who wanted to surrender to their lives.

Although Xiangyang Guandong is mostly a purely military fortress, making it impossible for Huaidong scouts and spies to infiltrate Xiangyang City, Yang Xiong's garrison is in the northwest corner of Xiangyang City. From the 24th, the Huaidong Army, which landed on Hutoushan Island and entered Wanjian Mountain and was responsible for blockading the northwest of Xiangyang City, began to throw arrows at Yang Xiong's remnants across the city wall to persuade them to surrender, and also explicitly asked Yang Xiong to contain other low-level military attaches and soldiers who were willing to surrender and beg for their lives.

Yang Xiong and his generals have not responded, and the Huaidong Army is not anxious in the periphery, calmly making preparations for the siege, gradually advancing the trenches and front bases to the city of Xiangyang, and erecting more heavy stone-throwing crossbows behind the trenches and within the range that can directly smash the city wall of Xiangyang......

Since the beginning of November, the enemy army in Xiangyang began to run out of food, and it was said that they could slaughter mules and horses to satisfy hunger, but when Yeji Luorong led the soldiers and horses on the west bank to retreat, when the Xianggu passage was cut off in the battle of Guanyinjian, there were only more than 2,000 mules and horses left in Xiangyang City, and more than 70,000 people were fed, and they could only support half a month, and by the end of November, they would be completely out of food.

Of course, there are still nearly 10,000 war horses in the hands of Pu Jieshi and Tong Ruilin and other captive generals, but Hu Lu's generals would rather starve to death than eat war horses, how could they hand over the war horses to the newly attached Han army for food? Instead of handing over the war horses for food, they also had to take the extremely precious bark and grass in the city at this time to feed the war horses, so that the war horses still had leg strength when breaking through, which further caused the confrontation and contradiction between the newly attached Han army and the captives.

In the end, Pu Jieshi, Tong Ruilin and other captive generals reluctantly agreed to hand over the sick and dead war horses for the Xinfu Han army to share food and hunger - compared to hunger, the greatest threat to the trapped enemy soldiers was the cold weather that came with the heavy snow for several days.

When Ye Ji Luorong led the soldiers and horses of the Western Front to attack Guanzhong, it was the turn of spring and summer, and the march of Keguanzhong to Nanyang was the turn of summer and autumn, and almost all the soldiers did not prepare winter clothes - in order to quickly take Jingxiang, the soldiers and horses of the Western Front almost did not rest and went south without stopping, and there was no time to prepare winter clothes and bedding to protect against the cold.

In order to alleviate the pressure on logistics, Yan Hu even took off the clothes from the slaughtered Nanyang soldiers and civilians and sent them to the soldiers to serve as autumn clothes, but the thin clothes may be able to barely resist the autumn cold, but they can't stop the dripping water and freezing, like scraping bones and flesh, especially in the days when the city was closed by heavy snow, hundreds of people were frozen to death in the camp almost every day.

This year is also a cold winter, except for the turbulent flow of the Han River, Huai River is not frozen, a little north of the water, Beiru River are frozen solid. The moat on the southwest side of Xiangyang City until the Dongcheng Bund and the Han River is also due to the fact that the source of the Han River on Hutoushan Island in the upper reaches is called the Huaidong Army after the shipwreck was blocked, because the water flow is no longer turbulent, it also froze after entering the second half of November, saving the Huaidong Army the work of filling the moat.

The land of Henan has entered the season of ice and snow, and the Huaixi Army has also stopped in Ruzhou. Regardless of Dong Yuan's sincerity or false intentions, there is no way to really march north in this season.

After the Yellow River was frozen, in the open Huanghuai Plain, Yanhu's cavalry could give full play to its greatest advantage, and Lin Jian also clearly passed on the order of the Privy Council, so that Dong Yuan and Yue Lengqiu would rest their troops and horses on the front line of Ruzhou and Wuyang, and rectify the defense, and Shouzhou, Haozhou, Dongyang and other prefectures would be responsible for the supply of the armies of Huaixi and Henan.

After the 25th, although the snow in the Xiangfan area had stopped, the wind had not stopped, and the snowmelt weather made the city of Xiangyang even more cold, and Zhou Tong also ordered more than 80 heavy stone-throwing crossbows deployed in place as early as the afternoon of the 24th to smash the city wall of Xiangyang from the west and south sides day and night, in order to open a gap for the Huaidong Army generals to storm the city of Xiangyang before the deadline of the 30th day arrived.

Dating back to the end of the Han Dynasty, when Liu Biao led Jingzhou to build Xiangyang, Xiangyang was the Hanshui Xiongguan in all dynasties, with water on three sides and a mountain. There are six gates in Xiangyang City, and the shortest city wall is the place where the north side is facing the water and the east side is not easy to be attacked by the enemy, but it is also more than two zhang high; And the southwest and south face the high city wall is more than three zhang, the highest even reaches four zhang, rammed earth is bound to cover masonry, can be described as solid and abnormal, easy to defend and difficult to attack.

However, in the face of all kinds of heavy catapults, the overly high city walls actually greatly increased the area of bombs.

The two-zhang high city wall may have a projectile accuracy of one or two out of ten shots at a distance of 400 paces; The four-zhang high city wall, the ejection accuracy will be doubled to ten shots and three or four - and the taller the city wall, the easier it is to collapse under the bombardment of stone projectiles weighing more than 100 catties.

When Lin Jian built a new city in Huaidong, the height of the city wall was generally required to be no more than two zhang; In fact, in the later period, Lin Jian required all localities to strengthen defense, but no longer required the construction of new or additional cities, but increased the requirements for the construction of small fortresses in dangerous terrain and traffic fortresses.

Jiangning City was deeply damaged in the Jiangning war, and Lin Jian did not have a plan to build it, he even considered opening more gaps in the Jiangning city wall to facilitate transportation, and handing over Jiangning's defense to the peripheral military defenses, which was much smaller, cheaper, and more defensive.

When all armies have lost the courage to fight in the field, no matter how high and dangerous the city is, it will not help; As long as an army has the courage to fight bloodily, even the smallest terrain advantage will be brought into full play - in addition to the large-scale application of stone-throwing crossbows in siege warfare, Lin Jian wants to push the entire society towards primary industrial civilization. Saltpeter and brimstone are never always scarce, and in the face of the weapons of war in the industrial age, the defensive effect of the walls that enclose a city is very limited.

A large number of iron-cast parts are used on the heavy rubble crossbow, which not only improves the structural strength and prolongs the service life of the weapon and the ability to fire continuously, but also improves the projection and accuracy with a heavier base frame. In order to supply the stone-throwing crossbow with enough stone bullets, the Huaidong Army initially allocated 4,000 people to enter Moqi Mountain to quarry.

From the 24th to the 29th, the number of heavy stone-throwing crossbows participating in the siege increased from the initial 80 to 130, and a total of more than 10,000 stone bullets were thrown at Xiangyang City, and the number of bullets directly received by the city wall more than six miles long on the west and south sides of Xiangyang, and the city wall in the southwest corner of Xiangyang collapsed as a whole on the 26th, and on the 29th, the city wall on the west and south sides of Xiangyang City, which was nearly seven miles long, formed a total of 11 gaps......

The Huaidong army was not in a hurry to storm through these gaps, more like just to give the low-level generals and soldiers in the city a chance to leave the city; In the five days from the beginning of the bombardment of Xiangyang, more than 3,000 subordinate troops took advantage of the gap in the attack of the Huaidong Army to come out of the gap in the city wall and surrender to the positions of the Huaidong Army.

For General Zhou Tong, who commanded the battle in the front base of Moqi Mountain, or Lin Lian, who supervised the battle in Fancheng on the north bank, he did not care whether the number of enemy soldiers who surrendered before the 30-day deadline was more or less, but more concerned about estimating the will of the enemy soldiers defending the city...... If the enemy's will to resist is still tenacious, the time to really send generals to rush up and capture the city will continue to drag on - time is completely on the side of the Huaidong Army.

Although there were two major wars in a year, Huaidong also had the pressure of lack of financial resources and unsustainable development, but after the battle at Miaotanling, the squeeze of the war on the central logistics stabilized. At present, the soldiers and horses in Dengzhou, Xichuan and the troops guarding Hanjin, Shicheng and Suizhou have actually entered a period of rest and rectification of defense, and after the opening of the Han River, the materials transported to Jingxiang are much less economical than the early Huaishan plank road to Chaishan to reserve materials, at least in terms of transportation costs.

Yang Xiong, who had been silent for several days, sent his cronies on the night of the 27th to enter the Huaidong Army's position on the periphery with other enemy soldiers who had left the city to surrender, and submitted a request to the Huaidong Army to surrender.

Surrender is completely different from surrender, surrender must be included as a prisoner of war, and Luo Wenhu attached to Huaidong in Lishan is regarded as surrender - after surrendering, Huaidong may or may not say otherwise, but logically speaking, even if Huaidong does not use it, he should be allowed to be disarmed and returned to the field, and his previous crimes cannot be investigated afterwards, let alone treated as a prisoner of war.

After thinking about it again, Lin Jian decided to accept Yang Xiong's surrender, sent people to secretly enter the city on the night of the 28th, and agreed with Yang Xiong that on the 29th, before the Huaidong Army officially attacked the city, his troops attacked the captives of Tong Ruilin's troops defending the western city, so as to create conditions for Zhang Gou's troops to attack Xiangyang from the western city......

In the middle of the afternoon of the 29th, one day earlier than the previously stated deadline, Yang Xiong attacked Tong Ruilin's troops as promised, causing chaos among the enemy troops in Xicheng.

The enemy forces in Xiangyang City were on the verge of collapse for nearly a month, under the multiple oppression of hunger and cold, as well as being in a desperate situation with no hope of escaping, and with the exception of the main defective generals and captive generals who were listed as first-class war criminals and a few of their close associates, the low-ranking officers and more general soldiers almost lost their fighting spirit.

Previously, he was suppressed by senior generals and his descendants and could not go out of the city to surrender, but at this time, the Huaidong army attacked and put down his weapons to save him, and there was no longer the heart to resist.

Before nightfall on the 29th, Zhang Gou led his troops to capture the west city of Xiangyang, and pushed the battle line in the city to the vicinity of the Xiangyang Mansion in the center of the city, and Tang Fuguan also launched a fierce attack on the south of Xiangyang on the night of the 29th, and there were more than 10,000 people who abandoned their weapons and surrendered in the city at night; In the early morning of the 30th, he killed the enemy general Tong Ruilin.

By dusk on the 30th, only Zhou Fan, Han Li, Pu Jieshi and other enemy generals led the last stubborn enemy to retreat to the northeast corner of Xiangyang with more than 5,000 soldiers and horses. There was no hope of breaking through the encirclement, and there was no possibility of surrender, just a final struggle in vain.

On the 30th and 1st of December, Tang Fuguan transferred a large number of scorpion crossbows from outside the city and deployed them on the periphery of the northeast corner city that the remnants of the enemy stubbornly defended, and threw thousands of oil canisters into the corner city where the remnants of the enemy stubbornly resisted. At night on December 2, Tang Fuguan ordered the ignition of the fire oil that was almost overflowing from the northeast corner, and then took advantage of the fire to break through and completely annihilate the enemy......

On December 3, Xiangyang was completely captured, killing more than 17,000 enemies, and at this time, more than 6,000 enemy soldiers starved or froze to death before the siege of the city, and more than 39,000 enemy soldiers were captured.

In addition, Yang Xiong led his troops to surrender to Cheng, and less than 5,000 soldiers and families survived from Xiangyang City, but they were all disarmed after the war. Lin Jian ordered Yang Xiong and other generals to return to their hometowns and return to their fields, hand over the goods they had looted in the war, and receive 30 Huaidong silver dollars per Ding and 30 acres of land granted by the local government to support their families. After the soldiers were disbanded, they took their families to Jingxiang prefectures and counties to serve as servants, and were allowed to be exempted from service for three years and resettled on the spot - even though Yang Xiong, who surrendered to Chengcheng at the end of the war, made certain achievements in the Battle of Xiangyang, the treatment he received naturally could not be compared with Luo Wenhu, who surrendered to Chengcheng in the early stage of the war, let alone Wang Xiang, who surrendered to Huaidong before the war.

If there is no difference, it will only call more speculators to sit on the wall and wait until the last moment.

But in any case, the fate of Yang Xiong and other generals who survived the first battle of Xiangyang was much better than that of other captured rebel generals and captive generals, receiving 30 silver dollars and granting 30 acres of land, and returning to the local area was at least a middle-class family, and it was not a problem to support their families.

For ordinary soldiers who surrendered to Chengcheng, they just wanted to survive, even if they were scattered to various prefectures and counties in Jingxiang to serve as servants, they were much better than other prisoners who did not know what kind of epidemic they would be exiled to, a place of extreme heat or bitter cold, and life and death were uncertain, and a considerable number of families were with them, and even had the hope of being resettled in the local area after three years.

Among the more than 39,000 prisoners who surrendered, 21 were first-class war criminals, and the remaining 102 first-class war criminals were killed on the spot during the city seizure; There were 1,629 other second- and third-class war criminals, of whom 367 were captured after the 30-day period.

Other prisoners of war and their prisoners, including other prisoners of war from the Miaotanling and the reconquest of Xinye, totaling more than 45,000, were also escorted to Shicheng, Huangpi, and Jingzhou in early December.

That is, in early December, the five-month-long battle of Nanyang-Jingxiang came to an end.

In addition to the remnants of Chen Hansan's remnants of about 1,000 people who fled to the deep mountains at the southern foot of Huaishan to continue the encirclement and annihilation, the rebel generals Sun Jichang, Ma Dekui, Mo Jiben and others either besieged and killed the Huaidong Army on the battlefield, or captured and beheaded the generals to atone for their crimes, or were captured in the later period of the Huaidong Army's purge.

In the entire Nanyang-Jingxiang battle, in the early stage, the Nanyang army, including the Liang Chengyi division of the Hezhong army, had 180,000 soldiers and civilians slaughtered, and after the war, only the remnants of Yu Yuan Guizheng and Liang Chengdong survived.

In the later stage of the war, the Huaidong Army, together with the Chizhou Army and the Jinghu Army, invested a total of nearly 300,000 troops, and nearly 160,000 soldiers and civilians accompanying the army, with 46,000 casualties of the Huaidong Army (including 12,000 killed in battle), 12,000 casualties of the Chizhou Army (6,000 killed in battle), 30,000 casualties of the Jinghu Army (24,000 killed in battle), and 8,000 casualties of the Minfu. More than 200,000 enemies were captured (including 60,000 horses and horses of Zhong Rong, Luo Jian, Wang Xian'er, Huo Tong and other troops who surrendered to Huaixi), and Luo Wenhu and Yang Xiong who surrendered to Huaidong during the war totaled 12,000 people, and more than 320,000 soldiers and horses on the western front of Yanhu were annihilated in this battle, including 45,000 elite cavalry of Yanhu's own tribe, and only Chen Zhihu and Ye Ji Luorong's headquarters totaled less than 90,000 soldiers and horses fled into Guanzhong......