Chapter Fifty-Eight: The City Breaks
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The Mid-Autumn Festival is a great time for family reunions, toasting and drinking, and inviting relatives and friends. But this year, no one seems to remember that there is such a festival, and even the Southern Song Dynasty, which used to sing highly, has held fewer programs such as the Mid-Autumn Festival Poetry Meeting.
The land has sunk into war, and many people have spent their lives in displacement. The family is broken, the wife is separated, the white-haired person sends the black-haired person, as if he woke up from a night's sleep, and the world is full of all kinds of sorrows.
The flames of war are not extinguished, the blood of life is flying, and the Southern Song Dynasty, like Dali, feels the pain of the world.
On the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival, on the earth, how many families are worried? How many families are worried?
The people of the White Night Territory have families reunited, and there are also scattered farewells. Groups of soldiers are gathering, one by one the army is moving, the pace of war has approached, and the wheel of the times will not stand still.
Tonight, it will officially kick off the prelude to the pacification of the world by the White Night forces.
Later historians commented that this night was called the Night of Dawn, meaning the dawn of dawn in the darkness of war.
The army was assembled, without any warning, not even a little prepared, those people may not even think about it, Bai Ye dared to really do it, or directly hit it.
Guide Mansion and Yingzhou, which are close to the far right of the White Night forces, were the first to encounter the baptism of artillery fire that did not belong to this era.
Dozens of new cannons were erected on pre-set positions, and after the artillerymen adjusted their orientation, referring to factors such as wind direction, they loaded one shell after another and bombarded the city wall of Yingzhou.
These shells are not solid iron balls, but flowering shells filled with explosives, and the lethality of one shell is far greater than before.
There are no ladders, no ramming cars, no large-scale sieges, what the White Night Army wants to show this time is that no matter how high and thick the city walls are, they are meaningless in the face of new weapons.
Warfare has changed with technology, from ancient stone tools to bows and arrows, from bows and arrows to muskets, weapons are constantly changing. The city walls went from nothing to nothing, and from existence to nothing, unless it was really a fortress of steel, in this era, it was impossible to defend against the artillery fire of the White Night Army.
Suddenly, there was a fierce bombardment, and a huge explosion resounded through the city.
Shrapnel was flying, the city walls were trembling, and Yang Yuanhong's officers and soldiers defending the city were instantly stunned, they were shouting and shouting, but they didn't even know where the enemy was.
A soldier stood up at the head of the city and looked in the direction of the artillery fire, but this inattentive get-up took his life.
A cannonball shattered at the head of the city, and the flames of the explosion illuminated the night, and the shrapnel that scattered in all directions, carrying powerful kinetic energy, tore apart the soldiers' bodies.
Under hundreds of pairs of eyes, the soldier was shattered to bones, and in an instant, he turned from a whole person to a piece of minced flesh.
Blood rose over the city, and the soldiers began to go crazy, they wanted to flee, they wanted to flee from the walls they were holding.
No matter how the officers and generals shouted in the back, it was no louder than the sound of artillery fire, but it could not reach the fear in their hearts. Some of the generals and officers fled with the soldiers, and they committed another taboo in modern warfare.
In ancient times, due to weapons and methods of warfare, soldiers liked to charge together and flee together, as if there were many people in this way, which could bring them a sense of security.
Who knows, there are many people, and the psychology of being safe together is covered by such artillery fire, which is an unwise decision.
A few shells pierced the night sky, as if flying from the other side of the sky, and instantly fell into the crowd and exploded.
"Boom" "Boom" "Boom"
The flames of the explosion woke up the people in the city, and some of the brave people went out to see, the city wall shook and the flames were in the sky, and a bunch of hundreds of soldiers were on the run, and the night sky was whistling, and several strange things flew in and exploded in the crowd.
Screams, roars, the earth seems to be shaken by giants, and the houses in the city are shaking.
At the time of the explosion, the bright light stimulated them to close their eyes, and when they opened their eyes, the ground was full of stumps and broken arms, and pieces of flesh and corpses.
There were lucky people who did not die in the explosion, but all of them were either missing arms or legs, and few were only slightly injured.
The bloody and tragic scene made some viewers can't help but vomit, and the smell of blood wafts in, even if you close your eyes, you can seem to see the separated human body, broken tissues and organs.
"Knock" "Knock"
The ground shook again, the walls shook, smoke and dust fell, and rubble flew sideways.
The people of Yingzhou City were shocked, knowing that this title was about to be broken. Their hearts were full of apprehension, wondering what this ferocious force would do to them? Will it be as brutal as the Mongols? Or is it like Yang Yuanhong, who talks about benevolent government, but only to the gentry and bureaucrats?
"The city has fallen, brothers, rush!"
The trumpet sounded, and a debut rushed in, entering from the collapsed walls, armed with new rifles, and unforgiving anyone who was hostile.
"Lay down your arms, and those who surrender do not die."
"Lay down your arms, surrender and don't kill."
"What about you, quickly lay down your weapons and go around in circles? Do you want to die? ”
All kinds of voices mocked, and the inhabitants of the city were awakened, and they stayed at home silently, holding their children and wives, and looked out cautiously for fear that someone would suddenly break in.
The autumn night is cool and silent, but tonight the whole city is not sleeping, gunshots, shouts of killing, screams for mercy, crying, all night long.
When dawn came, the people who had stayed awake all night, fearing that someone might break in, were reassured, and someone opened a crack in the door and peeked out to see columns of strangely dressed troops walking in the streets, their weapons very similar to the one that had driven away the Mongols three years earlier. A closer look shows that these soldiers are different from those soldiers three years ago, they do not have a domineering arrogance or an invincible demeanor, but they are a little more approachable.
Some sharp-eyed people also saw a few soldiers eating breakfast on the street, and the neighbor who sold breakfast, Lao Wang, was serving noodles to a few soldiers with a smile on his face. After a few soldiers finished eating noodles, they had to pay, but Lao Wang insisted on refusing to accept it, and one soldier was impatient and directly stuffed the copper coin into Lao Wang's arms, and a few people left.
Seeing Lao Wang Lehe's appearance of counting copper coins, some neighbors were bold and ran out to ask.
"Lao Wang, do you dare to accept money from these people? Aren't you afraid that they will come back to you for trouble? ”
A monkey with a sharp mouth pulled Lao Wang's sleeve and immediately asked.
"It's okay, it's okay."
Lao Wang smiled, his chubby face, his eyes were about to become a slit, and he waved his hand while cleaning up the dishes and chopsticks used by several soldiers.
"Why not? Are there still good people who are soldiers? ”
The sharp-beaked monkey-cheeked man was unhappy, pulled Lao Wang's sleeve and continued to ask, and his voice suddenly rose a few decibels.
"Li Er, you don't know?"
Lao Wang was also annoyed by this person, and when he turned around and saw everyone's curious eyes, he explained.
"Last night, you didn't know, these soldiers really didn't commit any crimes. They went into the city, fought for half the night, and finally had nowhere to stay, you think, if those soldiers had been in the past, they would have to make the city so noisy that they would have slept in other people's houses. Perhaps, if you fall in love with your wife and daughter, it will be ruined, and it will be ruined. ”
"But these soldiers slept on the street last night, and they didn't knock on the door of a house. I also slept on the street with them. ”
Lao Wang said in a low voice, and several neighbors looked at the soldiers who kept passing, and their expressions changed.
"In that battle, once the city is broken, there is no reason for the army to come in and loot?"
Lao Wang put the dishes and chopsticks in a wooden bucket, scooped a scoop of water with a wooden scoop, and began to scrub the dishes and chopsticks.
"Then they didn't loot?"
A young man dressed as a scholar and dressed in shabby clothes asked.
"These soldiers didn't loot!"
Lao Wang shook his head firmly, and said: "Last night, there were some ruffians who wanted to take advantage of the fire to rob, but they were also killed on the spot or arrested by these people. ”
A few neighbors were silent, and a few more soldiers came over for breakfast, and saw Lao Wang chatting and bragging with the soldiers, as if this army was indeed different from before.
Such a scene was not uncommon in the two cities, and the people who had spent the night peacefully were amazed to find that this army was completely different from what they had imagined, that it had no pretensions, that it was kind to the people, and that it did not look at the people as human beings.
…………………………………………
In one night, the horse was fast, and due to the speed of information transmission in this era, until the evening of the next afternoon, a military horse rushed through the gate of Jinan and headed towards the palace in the city.
The construction of this group of palaces is not big, nor majestic, but very low-key, very simple and simple, but the design reveals an invisible atmosphere, as if this palace is like a diving dragon, sooner or later ascend to the nine skies, turn into a real dragon.
The military horse came to the front of the city outside the palace in a blink of an eye, and did not see the sergeant on horseback dismounting, but only roared, and the soldiers defending the city immediately let him go, allowing the sergeant to gallop in on horseback.
"Report, ladies and gentlemen, there is an urgent report from the border gate."
A guard walked into a large hall, there was no one in the main seat of this hall, and there were vacancies in the rest of the seats, but there were still dozens of people here, one by one, either writing hard, or contemplating hard, or whispering to the people around them.
As soon as the guard entered, everyone stopped, frowning slightly. At this time, a middle-aged man in a red robe sitting in the front seat stroked his beard and said, "If there is any urgent report, don't you submit it quickly." ”
The guards immediately went out, but in the blink of an eye, a disarrayed, unarmored sergeant walked in, he first saluted everyone, took out a letter from his bosom, bowed his head, and presented his hands to the red-robed middle-aged man.
The letter was sealed with wax, and when the middle-aged man in the red robe saw it, he couldn't help but "chuckle", took the letter, and quickly opened it to see, his face changed from white to blue, and then from blue to red, and the whole face was suddenly red, and even the breath coming out of the nostrils was faintly with a sudden anger.
He read it again, didn't believe it, and watched it again from steal to end, and still didn't believe it, so he read it again.
The surrounding colleagues and officials couldn't wait, and craned their necks to find out what was written in the letter.