In the face of the enthusiasm of the people, Li Yuan was also very encouraged and grateful, but Li Yuan also knew that defending the city was not as simple as relying on the enthusiasm of the people. This defense is very different from the surface defense of the North City. Defending on the water can be done with a variety of extraordinary means, but sieges on land are often very variable.

In addition to the tall and sturdy hardware of the walls, there was a need for sufficient garrisons and sophisticated defense equipment, neither of which seemed to be available at the moment.

Suzhou City has not experienced war for a long time, the prosperity and prosperity of this city has nothing to do with the city defense, it relies on the unique geographical location, the integration of convenient water and land transportation to have today's prosperity.

But these advantages do not hide its weaknesses in the defense of the city, just like a woman who is naturally beautiful, although her status is noble and her temperament is outstanding, but those do not allow her to keep her virginity when she encounters a strong man, because she does not wear armor, hold a sharp blade, and do not have the martial arts to defend against the enemy.

Although the people have invested great enthusiasm and a lot of manpower to strengthen the city wall, the city of Suzhou is too big, and the city wall of the big city with a radius of more than ten miles is not what kind of height the low city wall can be increased in half a day.

In view of this, Li Yuanzhi was able to retreat to the next best thing, and he asked the people to strengthen the low places on the western city wall, focusing on the fortifications on both sides of the city gate. In addition, as on the north city gate, Li Yuan asked the people to build something similar to the arrow tower platform in each section of the city wall, which can be used as a fortress when defending the city, and play a certain role in strong resistance.

The city defense is not strong enough, and the manpower of the defenders is even more stretched. Originally, there were only more than 10,000 defenders of Suzhou, but after yesterday's battle, they were reduced by more than 4,000 people, and only 6,000 defenders were left available.

These 6,000 people must leave at least 3,000 people to defend in Beicheng, because there are still more than 10,000 Jin troops eyeing the Beicheng, in order to prevent the Jin army from attacking Beicheng again, there must be the most basic manpower to ensure that Beicheng does not have problems. Then there are only 3,000 men who can be transferred to the West City defense, which is of course far from enough.

The good news is that the 5,000 reinforcements invited by the Gu family from Huzhou finally arrived at noon, plus the more than 3,000 strong men who were temporarily conscripted, so barely formed a garrison of more than 10,000 people. But even with more than 10,000 troops defending the city, there were less than 3,000 bows and arrows necessary to defend the city. This also greatly weakened the defensive ability of the defenders.

Li Yuan had no other way, he could only let people transport more stones and rolling wood to the city, although in Li Yuan's mind, he had long disdained to use these primitive means of defending the city, but at this time, he had to use them.

It was getting dark, but the lights inside and outside the west city of Suzhou were bright and full of people. The soldiers and civilians of Suzhou were still using the last time to build fortifications and move the materials to defend the city, but the Jin army under the city had already dispatched a formation when they came, which was to attack the city overnight.

The drums and trumpets sounded, and the siege battle officially began. More than 20,000 infantry of the front army of the Jin army began to advance in a uniform formation arranged into more than ten phalanxes.

The formation advanced to two hundred paces away, and the Jin troops on the periphery of the phalanx brushed out their shields to form a shield wall, and the Jin soldiers in the rear raised the ladder they were carrying to the top of their heads, let out an earth-shattering cry, and began to step into the range of the defenders' bows and arrows.

Li Yuan closed his lips and stood motionless on the city tower, he could feel the rapid breathing of the soldiers defending the city around him, in the face of this large-scale siege, the soldiers defending the city had no bottom in their hearts. At this time, they must not show any timidity, otherwise it will cause them to panic greatly.

"Got closer, took aim. When they get to the moat and start building the bamboo raft pontoon, don't waste your energy." Li Yuan shouted in a deep voice.

The order was quickly conveyed on the city walls, and all the defenders were foaming at the mouth and glaring as the wall-like Jin army marched forward gradually.

One hundred and fifty steps, one hundred steps, eighty steps, fifty steps.

The phalanx of the Jin army arrived at the moat, the moat of Suzhou is a river channel dug by leading the water of the canal, the water flow is turbulent and wide up to more than ten zhang, like a rushing river

。

For such a moat, it is not easy to build a pontoon bridge. The Jin army tied up the bamboo rafts and wanted to connect more than a dozen bamboo rafts with ropes and lay pontoon bridges on the water. This method is of course simple and practical, but the person who builds the bamboo raft needs to be free from the protection of the shield, and this is when it is most vulnerable.

Sure enough, more than a dozen pontoon bridges began to be built, and more than 100 Jin soldiers carried bamboo rows to break away from the phalanx and came to the river to connect ropes to build bridges. At this time, a clear and audible command came from the head of the city, "Release the arrows".

In an instant, a rain of arrows erupted from dozens of places at the head of the wall, and in just an instant, hundreds of soldiers of the Jin army who were building a pontoon bridge fell, falling on the edge of the moat like leeks being cut.

Countless arrows rained down on the river, chirping. Obviously, the target of the defenders of the city was these Jin soldiers who built the bridge, because they were defenseless, and killing and wounding the enemy who built the bridge was obviously the most effective means to stop the Jin army from attacking the city.

"Shoot the arrows!" Military orders also sounded in the Jin army's formation.

In the middle of the phalanx were hundreds of archers, who immediately began to bend their bows and shoot arrows at the head of the city when they heard the military order. More than a dozen archers in the phalanx counterattacked the head of the city together, and the density of the arrows exceeded the firepower of the head of the city, but the bows and arrows of the head of the city were not suppressed, and they must not be suppressed.

At the risk of being shot, the Wu Yue archers at the head of Suzhou let the old fiercely release their arrows. For a time, arrows flew everywhere in the city, everywhere there was the sound of locusts breaking through the air, everywhere there was the sound of bowstrings vibrating, everywhere was the sorrow and shouts of those who were hit by arrows, and everywhere were the struggles and despairs of the dying people.

The number of casualties on both sides soared rapidly, and the defenders of Suzhou at the head of the city continued to scream and fall to the ground, and the losses of the Jin army under the city were even greater. The defenders of the city had lost five or six hundred dead and wounded in just a quarter of an hour, while the Jin army had fallen three times that number.

What made the Jin army even more frightened was that the pontoon bridge on the moat had not been successfully built, because the defenders at the head of the city seemed to be crazy and shot arrows at the pontoon bridge construction in desperation, resulting in almost all the Jin soldiers who built the pontoon bridge being killed, and the other soldiers could not continue their mission at all.

The drums and horns sounded again in the Jin army's formation, and Xu Ruchang, who couldn't stand such a slow construction of the pontoon bridge, sent all the remaining 5,000 archers. When these 5,000 archers arrived, they immediately showed a strong suppressive force. A rain of arrows like a dark cloud enveloped all areas above and below the city walls, and although it was a top-down projectile, it could clear all the defenders who were not in the corner.

The tremendous impact of the strong bow and iron clusters caused stone chips to fly on every section of the city wall that was attacked, and the oncoming city walls were shot out of the potholes and dense potholes. On the newly built city wall fortifications, the sandbag door panels are full of dense arrows. Almost all the defenders who dared to emerge from the fortifications and battlements were shot, and this was the power of the dense fire.

It was by taking advantage of the forced cover of these 5,000 archers, and it was a separate cover where pontoon bridges were built everywhere, and half an hour after the battle began, the three pontoon bridges were built.

The soldiers of the siege Jin army of the three phalanxes rushed to the city along the pontoon bridge, and with the breakthrough of these three places, the pontoon bridges in the rest of the places were also built one after another. More than 17,000 infantry rushed through the moat in a very short period of time, as if deliberately in order to pull the battle line and dilute the strength of the defenders, the Jin army siege soldiers and horses set up five or six hundred ladders under the mile-long city wall, and began to attack the city in an all-round way.

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