There are still 70 minutes left before the fall of the Great Song Dynasty

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It was not yet light, but the lights were already bright outside the city.

Just now, several Varyags followed Queen Elizabeth to the celebration hall outside the city.

It may be that the painful experience of that year left too deep an impression on the decision-making level of the Purple Horde, so for a long time, the layout of Dadu's city defense was not so much to prevent foreign enemies from attacking, but to be able to run out in time when civil strife appeared. For example, there are several gates that have always been controlled by Varyags, rather than by special garrisons.

Sure enough, after the situation in the city, these doors, which were used as ceremonial doors on weekdays, came in handy.

This habit has also been around for a long time. Even later, the city faced a large-scale attack by foreign enemies, and the original thinking still left a far-reaching impact.

When Guo Li replanned the city, he also put forward suggestions for renovating the city defense and repairing the city wall. He believed that the walls of Theodosius were too old to keep up with the current times. Due to the technical constraints at that time, this kind of one-line wall was not suitable for firepower, and the design of the arrow tower was already backward. The advantage of the boulder wall itself in terms of defense is limited to a huge volume, and the actual efficiency is not high, which can be said to be a waste.

Therefore, he suggested repairing the original interior wall, removing various outbuildings behind the stone wall, and then using the stone wall as the core, adding rammed earth on both sides to thicken the wall. At the high ground of the city wall, a special heavy circular earthen platform was erected to place heavy artillery. Where the ground is low, the soil is filled and raised.

The huge amount of soil needed for the project was dug from the area between the inner and outer walls, and then the outer walls were also expanded outward, so that a second moat could be formed between the two stepped walls. The bridge was used for traffic on weekdays, but during the war, the bridge was demolished, and the two walls were connected by a suspension ladder erected by a crane. In this way, two problems can be solved at once.

However, there was little support for this proposal. Everyone thinks that this is a waste of money and no benefit. In the eyes of the Khanate's administrators, this plan is good, but it just shouldn't be used here.

Although the name Dadu is imposing, for a long time, the positioning of the city was somewhat awkward. Because the core area of the Purple Horde was in the northern part of "Romania", not the Greek region. When I moved here, it was purely for political purposes, not for economic and military needs.

As a result, the capital was not only not a safe area in the hinterland, but also a fortress on the southern front: the reluctant Greeks and Serbs in the west, the Turkmen in the east, and the numerous Italian and Greek pirates in the south continued to threaten the surrounding areas. In fact, it is a situation of "the Great Khan guarding the country".

During this period, most of them did have high military needs. However, the problem of the walls of Theodosius was not that they were inadequately defended—on the contrary, they were too large.

As the front line of the south, in the original strategy, there was no need for this place to gather so many troops.

Compared with the previous dynasties, the system of the Purple Horde was relatively stable, at least most of the time, avoiding the classic "Byzantine general problem", and did not need to be so sensitive to the forbidden army.

Moreover, the Thracian Plain is actually not very big, probably the area of the Han Dynasty. Even if the Great Khan really wants to defend the country, it doesn't mean that he has to pile up all the troops in the city - the Han Dynasty didn't stuff all the northern and southern armies into Chang'an. The neighboring provinces in the north can be transferred at any time, and it is much easier to be stationed in such a dispersed manner, both militarily and logistically.

But the scope of the defense of Constantinople was so great that it was empty, so to speak, and there was nothing but political influence. If it is another city, it can also be contracted - or look at Chang'an, after the collapse of the late Tang Dynasty, the outer Guo and the palace city were abandoned, leaving only the imperial city as the new Chang'an city. However, the city defenses of Constantinople were basically on the outer walls, and the palace and the imperial city were not even clearly separated. The exterior wall was so thick that it didn't collapse even if it wasn't managed. Learning from the late Tang Dynasty, the effort of demolishing the city wall and building the palace wall was enough to build a new city.

Therefore, this forms a chain of sets: if you occupy the city, you have to defend it; To defend it is to invest a lot of troops; If you invest your troops, you can't eat food here in vain, you have to have a supporting strategic plan; With a matching programme, more logistical supplies and resources are needed. In this way, it seems that only one city has been occupied, but in fact, the policy of the whole country has been led south.

Therefore, for a long time, there were many voices in the Khan's court that opposed the relocation of the capital here, feeling that this city had kidnapped the strategy of the whole country. Later, with the resumption of trade, these voices gradually faded away. But the reluctance to invest here, and the vigilance of the local environment, have always been there.

Therefore, Guo Di's plan is unlikely to be recognized by everyone - everyone thinks it's too big, and you want to make it bigger, isn't this pulling everyone to accompany you through the spectacle. Therefore, except for Guo Di, who is tired of building cities everywhere, almost no one is interested in this.

In fact, his plan has basically not been practiced in any place. After being vetoed, until Guo Di's death, he was put on the shelf.

The reason is simple: the Purple Horde does not need a fortress of this size. His land enemies were mainly Europeans, and the military system of the Europeans made it almost impossible for them to carry out large-scale attacks.

Battles on the border are often organized by the localities on both sides, and the largest is basically only a few hundred people. Further up, it can only be the big lord who comes forward, and it needs to gather vassals and mercenaries with great fanfare, and let the world know in the literal sense - so as to attract more and better mercenaries, and the result may be more economical.

In the face of such a single transparent situation, the Purple Horde generally did not defend to the death, but also gathered the main force to try to solve the enemy in the field. Because of the faster mobilization on their side, they can maintain a strategic advantage for a long time; And destroying the enemy in the field is much easier than attacking the city, which is more conducive to their cavalry play.

Therefore, as a result, everyone thought that this kind of city defense was not needed in small battles, and the Purple Horde army took the initiative to fight field battles in major battles. If you lose the field...... He cowered in the city and waited for death, but it was just a little longer. It's better to give up this kind of big and inexpensive city, go back to the grassland to herd sheep, and find an opportunity to make a comeback.

Until now, there is not a single city defense army in the capital, and various war groups and even navies have stations in the city, and the relationship is also complicated. Even though most of the garrison has now moved out of the city, many problems remain.

The regular armed forces in the whole city are still in fact "outward-looking", and the idea is still to prepare to go out to fight. In the event of an unexpected situation, without a unified corps command to manage it, it will reach a level of chaos where it is impossible to even say who should go to quell the chaos.

The only advantage this time is that after discovering that there was an accident in the city, someone soon sent a message to the Queen Mother. Although she doesn't care about practical affairs all year round, the Queen Mother reacted quite quickly this time. On the one hand, she dispatched manpower to urgently fish out important people; On the other hand, she herself quickly left the permanent monastery, and without waiting for more people to assemble or anyone to come looking for her, she set out on her own initiative and ventured to the naval camp.

In addition to the Varyag-controlled gates, there is also an entrance and exit that is not under the control of the traditional "city guards", which is the naval pier on the Golden Horn.

If you really want to talk about it, the Golden Horn Fleet is actually the "last Roman". Even after the complete decline of the Palaiologos, this small fleet still existed, and even launched an attack on the Genoese across the bay, forcing them to agree to relax the conditions and give more money to the small Greek court in the city. It was also the last meaningful initiative of the entire dynasty.

With the revival of trade, the demand for maritime power naturally increases rapidly. As a relatively independent force, although there are a large number of Greeks in its members, their relationship with the various forces in the city has always been more delicate - the navy actually looks down on the old Greek nobles in the city, but it inevitably has contacts with these people who have been engaged in trade all year round.

Tonight, however, they were quiet and did not see any movement. It wasn't until some citizens were affected by the fire and began to flee towards the coast that the navy in the port reacted and hurriedly prepared. Seeing this situation, the Queen Mother did not miss the opportunity, and with a few entourages, she broke into the military port.

Several heads of the Navy were not here, and in the harbor there were only the guards of the camp and a few officers on duty. Several boats are training for night sailing and have just returned. The Queen Mother immediately demanded that all the soldiers who could be gathered gather and go ashore to prepare for battle.

The officers were completely confused by this, and felt that even if they met the enemy, they should get on the ship and go to sea. As for the shore, there should be someone to deal with. However, in the small fleet that returned, the leader happened to be Shi Ke, the eldest grandson of the Shi family, who was more familiar with the Queen Mother, so he took the initiative to come forward and suppressed the opposition, while rowing over two ships carrying naval guns and cruising on the shore, and the gunners were on standby on board, ready to provide support at any time; While arming the other sailors on duty to take control of several important places outside the port.

Although the Queen Mother has always been indifferent and has not had much administrative dealings with others, on the other hand, this also means that she is relatively neutral and does not make others jealous or suspicious. So, seeing that he came out and took the initiative to take over the command - including, of course, the responsibility after the fact, the other officers no longer objected.

After that, according to the request of the Queen Mother, he transferred a fast boat and sent the Queen Mother and her party directly along the waterway to the vicinity of the venue outside the city.

Here, she met Empress Anna, who was in a hurry, and the drunken unconscious. After glancing at the others, she didn't care about her sleeping son and grandson, but walked to the edge of the big tent, where Prime Minister Wang Cheng was, and reached out to grab his hair.

"Lao Wang, get up!"

However, Prime Minister Wang Cheng was also drunk and ignored her completely. The Queen Mother stretched out a big hand and slapped him twice in the unexpected eyes of the guards. But even so, Prime Minister Wang just muttered dissatisfiedly, talking nonsense that he couldn't understand, and not long after, he fell asleep again.

The Queen Mother was speechless for a while, so she had to walk up to Peng Sai Khan and face him again - this time, everyone's eyes had turned into consternation.

"Why, haven't you ever seen my mother beat her son?" The Queen Mother reprimanded: "Don't look at it, hurry up and call someone to go!" ”

"So are you." She glared at her daughter-in-law dissatisfied: "You have been watching from the side, how can you still let him drink like this?" ”

"They're all drinking, I can't stop it." The queen argued.

"Your man can't stop it, and your men can't stop it, but what about your son?" The Queen Mother threw the pendulum on the table, walked to the side of Tuohuan, lifted his head, and slapped him four times in a row: "Look, I actually let this kid faint - how did you behave like a mother, you can't even control your son!" ”

"Then you can't control your son...... " the queen muttered.

The Queen Mother thought about it and found that what she said made sense, her old face turned red, and she was a little speechless for a while. I had no choice but to prevaricate: "Okay, I was too indulgent to them before, and I also had problems - but now, I can only hurry up and clean up the mess for them." ”

She looked around again to see if anyone was still awake, and found a little boy at the tent door with wide eyes, curious but cautious looking at him.

"Hey, isn't this Constantine, why did you get to this place?" She complained casually: "These people are also unconscious, how can they still take children when they drink?" ”

"His father was in the tent across the street, and he probably drank too much. I called him over to greet everyone, but everyone else was so drunk that they couldn't even salute and greet everyone. Let Constantine take care of him, as a result of which he himself began to talk nonsense. I had no choice but to let the kid wait there for the time being. ”

"Oh, oh." The Queen Mother probably understood, so she could only shake her head: "Hey, you see how well-behaved other people's children are." It's all the same name, why is it so bad-tempered......"

The Empress had no choice but to explain that Constantine was actually a very common name. Dehuan is called this, Guo Kang is called this, and Zhu Wenkui's religious name is also called this. And among the Greeks, of course, there are many of them. The boy was the queen's nephew, Constantine of the Palaiologos.

The people of their family are often either vain and arrogant, or incompetent – of course, more often than both. But this child has been smart since he was a child, and his personality is also quiet, and he doesn't look like this family.

His parents are probably aware of this. It just so happens that Tuhuan is also his relative, so he finds opportunities to bring him over from time to time, and takes the opportunity to get acquainted with Tuhuan and others.

Most of the twelve hours are coming to an end, so I'll go back and come out in a single volume.

It's an attempt, and there's a lot of experience and lessons. The amount of a single essay is not too much more than expected in the outline, it should be mainly because I was busy with graduation in the middle of the two months, and the update frequency is too low, which seems to be very procrastinating. But later, I will probably know how to deal with it better.

In the first short time, there may have been a lot of settings to write, but at least the rest was planned, and there was no background introduction that was not needed in the short term. And this book, I can already stop writing popular science without writing it. In fact, it's really popular, just like the last book, the first half of the chapter is all of those......

Of course, there was no way around it at that time. It's only been a few years, but to be honest, the online climate has become really fast. When I first started writing, there were a few words in the article about Europeans eating with their hands, and some people accused me of deliberately smearing the West. I write about the church, and it is also said that (in fact, I have always been the church blower, and I have always said that the church is the beacon of European civilization...... At the most outrageous time, some people said that I was adulterated with private goods, and I posted the information, but some people said that he knew that it was true, but he couldn't say bad things about the West so directly, because indiscriminately exposing the shortcomings of the West would make everyone blind and arrogant, and they would turn back to the Qing Dynasty...... That's it......

So I keep reminding myself that we are actually a "small circle", and I may be too cautious for this. Anyway, I would like to ask for your understanding.

(End of chapter)