Bang!

With an earth-shattering sound, the cannon port on the city wall suddenly erupted into a huge flame.

In the next second, a huge iron ball shot into the sky like a meteor.

I saw that its speed was very fast, and it flew out of two or three miles almost in the blink of an eye, crossed a brilliant arc in the air, and then crossed the head of Yelu Enemy Lugu, and fell straight into the pile of Liao troops outside the city.

"Bang!"

A huge wave of sound then exploded like thunder, and because it was a parabolic shot from a high city wall, not a straight line on the ground, it did not have the effect of piercing the sugar gourd.

But even so, the huge solid bullet still killed the two people on the spot, and then pierced the ground, startling the dust.

Many people didn't even know what was going on, only that the originally dense crowd formation was chaotic in an instant, and the blood and brains of the two people who died on the spot burst out everywhere, dust fluttered up, and there were faint screams.

It was a cannonball that hit the ground, and the splashes of dirt and stones shot out in all directions, injuring the people around them.

The entire battlefield was silent in an instant.

Everyone froze in place, blankly glancing around, oblivious to the explosion and what had fallen into their formation.

"Pillar, you straight thief, you're crooked!"

Instead, an angry rebuke erupted from the city, and it was a middle-aged officer scolding the artillerymen.

However, only moments later, the second gun was fired again.

Bang!

After another loud bang, Jerugu's eyes widened as he saw that the black iron ball was falling straight in his direction, and he didn't even have time to urge his horse to flee.

The next moment, there was another "bang", without a trace of screams, even the people and horses, the strong body of Yelu Enemy Lugu directly turned into a puddle of flesh, and there was still only flying dust in the place, and the body of the man and horse buried under the dust was smashed to pieces.

"Kill!"

Almost as soon as he saw the death of the enemy's general, the north gate of Baosai City was opened, and a middle-aged officer in armor galloped out, followed by thousands of cavalry.

This middle-aged officer is called Yang Wenguang, who is a left-handed Dianzhi, just a junior officer of the ninth grade, and he is not even a general.

Because in the Bianliang period, after the artillery was built, there was a need for artillery test firing, so Zhao Zhen transferred Yang Wenguang, who was a guard at the time, to be the small squad leader of the artillerymen, anyway, there were only a few guns, and there were more than ten gunners in total.

This time the Liao State attacked, the imperial court mobilized 100,000 forbidden troops from the rear to the front line, Yang Wenguang's artillery team was naturally among them, and his father Yang Yanzhao used to be the governor of Baozhou, and he was very familiar with here.

The lethality caused by two guns is actually very small, because of the difficulty of making grenades, before the industrial level reaches that premise, almost only solid bullets can be used, so so far, two shells down, it will kill three people and a horse.

But almost at the moment when the gate of Baosai was opened, the infantry phalanx of the Liao State first had a commotion, and then with the strange cry of the first soldier "Ah", he threw away the weapon in his hand and turned around and ran, and the entire Liao infantry phalanx collapsed in an instant, and the soldiers were defeated like a mountain and poured to the rear.

In the era of front-loading smoothbore guns, solid shells were indeed less powerful than grenades that could explode. However, whether it is naval or land warfare, it is generally recognized that the most effective is the solid ammunition.

Because in the era of black powder, spherical grenades were basically decorations, and the number of fragments against infantry was too small. There are only more than 20 fragments of grenade fragments in 12-pound Napoleonic shells, and considering the scattered spherical distribution of fragments, and the effective fragments above the ground are almost halved, the probability of hitting people within a radius of 15 meters is very low.

On the other hand, if the solid bullet is a plane shot, it can have the effect of piercing the sugar gourd against the enemy's array.

According to "The Science of Victory" and "On War", during the Napoleonic era, a solid bullet once penetrated 26 columns of infantry phalanx, directly killing more than 40 people. Moreover, these people were all beaten through the body, torn apart, and died in a terrible state, which was a very big blow to the morale of the enemy's army.

It can be seen from this that although the cannonballs fired from the city wall are parabolic and cannot cause the effect of a single cannon piercing the heart like a direct shot on the ground, this sturdy thing that smashed people into pieces a few miles away gave the Liao soldiers a lot of psychological damage!

In this case, the Liao soldiers around the deceased first began to collapse, and then led the others, like dominoes, to defeat before the battle began.

Even the Liao cavalry, who supervised the battle, no longer killed the fleeing soldiers, but reined in their horses and left, running fast.

One is that their Lord is going to die.

The second is that when they see the fate of Jelu's enemy Lugu, they are also afraid!

Yang Wenguang led the thousands of cavalry prepared in the city, pursued and killed all the way, chased the Liao soldiers and horses out of several miles, and killed hundreds of enemies before returning.

If it weren't for the fact that Yelu Zongzhen didn't concentrate all his forces outside the north gate to attack, in addition to the north city, there were still Liao troops in the west and east cities that had not been defeated, and they immediately rushed to help when they heard the movement, I am afraid that this time would directly make the Liao invasion army completely collapse.

But even so, Yelu Zongzhen was shocked when he learned that the Song army had an ultra-long-range killing weapon. The Song army was too strong, there were catapults throwing earth-shaking thunder for about a mile, bows and crossbows a hundred paces away, and grenades under the city.

Now three miles away, there are actually iron bullets shooting out to smash people, do you want their Daliao cavalry to live?

Seeing that the attack on the North City Gate was frustrated, Yelu Zongzhen had to retreat more than ten miles, reorganize the troops, and set up camp. Even if the casualties of the entire Liao army were not large, hundreds of people were killed and wounded, but the morale of the army fell to the bottom.

In this case, it is obviously impossible to attack the city again.

Yelu Zongzhen consulted with his ministers again, and now there were only three choices before them.

The first is to withdraw the troops immediately, and take advantage of the fact that the casualties are not large now, and go back in disgrace.

The second is to negotiate peace with the Song State, although their attack was frustrated, but on the whole they also destroyed a large number of fortresses and military villages of the Song army, but they have not yet broken through the cities of the Song army to achieve the goal of deterring the Song State.

But at least the momentum has won, and it is still in the situation of the Liao State attacking and the Song army defending, as long as the Song army admits instigation, the two sides still have room for maneuver in peace talks.

The third is to continue the offensive.

Although the attack range of the new weapon is indeed very long, its lethality is limited, as long as the cavalry overseers force the infantry to continue the attack under the fire of the Song army, as long as they rush to the city and set up ladders, they may still have a chance to break through the fortress.

The problem is that today the Song army only showed two cannons, and who knows how many more they have? And is there a more terrible weapon hidden, can it threaten the Liao emperor in the rear?

These are all things to consider.

And more importantly, the Song army can attack two or three miles away, and when the Liao infantry runs to the city, the distance of two or three miles is enough for the Song army to fire a few more rounds of artillery fire.

Then there were catapults throwing thunderbolts at the head of the city, and crossbows from beds to shoot, and bows and grenades at the closest.

If the soldiers run under the city walls, how many people will have to die.

And maybe under the strong firepower of the Song army, the foot soldiers are afraid that they will not be able to run under the city at all, and they will have already collapsed.

This is not a drill or a fantasy, in ancient times, when fighting a war, only a small number of casualties would cause a great collapse of the whole army.

Later generations often said that the proportion of this small number of casualties was 10%, although the figure of 10% has no exact source, but in ancient times, it was normal for an army to collapse after only a small number of soldiers died, even if it had hundreds of thousands of troops.

For example, in the Spring and Autumn Period, the battle of Kaze, the Vietnamese army was 50,000 and the Wu army was 60,000, and the Vietnamese military first learned that the three armies of Wu divided the troops equally, with 20,000 people each.

Therefore, the Vietnamese army weakened the left and right flanks to 6,000 people each, crossed over first and led away 20,000 people on the left and right flanks of the Wu army, and then the Chinese army attacked the Wu army with an absolute advantage of 40,000 people.

and in the last years of the Qin Dynasty, the Battle of Jingcheng, the commander of the Han army, first ambushed 2,000 cavalry, and then led the main force of 10,000 to fight with the Zhao army of 200,000, and retreated, pretending to be defeated and fleeing.

After running to the Mianman River, the formation of the Zhao army at this time had been stretched by the pursuit battle and could not be lined up. When Han Shin arrived at the river, he relined his formation and withstood the onslaught of the enemy.

At this time, the 2,000 cavalry in ambush went out and captured the Zhao army camp. Although they did not inflict too many casualties on the Zhao army, the Zhao army also directly collapsed on all fronts.

Therefore, although the proportion of soldiers who died in the whole army is only a very small minority, this usually means that a certain front of the army has collapsed, and the enemy at the collapsed point expands its advantage by flanking, collapsing, and continuing to flank and outflank the cycle, which in turn leads to the complete collapse of the entire army.

Yelu Zongzhen, as the emperor of Liao, has been good at riding and shooting since he was a child, so he is naturally not a fool. Therefore, when he thought of the strength of the Song army's city like a turtle shell, he felt that his brain hurt, and now he really couldn't think of a way to break through the enemy's city.

If the confrontation continues, the Liao State cannot afford it.

Bypassing these cities and going directly south, the problem is that the southward movement is full of Song army cities, fortresses and military villages, and the logistics line can't keep up.

Even if he can rob so much grain and grass, what can he do with the Yellow River, can he still build a boat by the river and kill the Yellow River and rush to Bianliang Kaifeng Mansion?

Unless the cavalry of the Liao State has wings!

Therefore, Yelu Zong is really going crazy, now it is not withdrawing, it is not withdrawing, it is not withdrawing, I knew that I was pretending to be deaf and dumb at the beginning, as long as the Song State did not take the initiative to break the covenant, it would still be able to earn hundreds of thousands of yuan every year, so why bother to ask for hardship?

And just when Yeluzong was really riding a tiger and was in a dilemma, on the city of Baosai, Wang Deyong, the general of Baosai, was also a veteran, and through scout reconnaissance, the morale of the Liao State declined, so he immediately contacted Fan Zhongyan.

At this time, Fan Zhongyan actually knew that Liao Guosheng attacked the east and west, attacked Gaoyang on the surface, and actually attacked Baosai, wanting to take down Baosai first, and then gnaw other bones.

So Lao Fan immediately redeployed his troops, reorganized more than 100,000 troops, and went north to rescue.

But his march was slow.

The main reasons are, first, to defeat the Liao country's infantry outside Gaoyang City, and second, to guard against the Liao's cavalry, so during the march, it is necessary to maintain a good infantry formation.

However, "marching formations" and "combat formations" are completely different concepts.

The infantry of the Song army in the "battle array" formation was actually not afraid of cavalry charges, because the main infantry units of the Song Dynasty had heavy armor foot soldiers, and once the Liao cavalry fell into it and lost its mobility, even the heavy cavalry would be reduced to lambs to be slaughtered.

The fear is that when the infantry has not yet entered the state of the "combat array", they are in the "marching array", and the cavalry of the Liao State launched a surprise attack, first flying kites and shooting at a distance of dozens of paces to prevent the infantry from lining up and then carrying out a surprise attack, which can easily cause the instant collapse of the entire military array.

So to put it simply, if you encounter the Liao cavalry in the field, Fan Zhongyan is not afraid at all when the army formation has been arranged. However, he had to march to Pausa, and if he was attacked on the way, the problem would be serious.

If Yue Fei Zai would definitely be able to deal with these problems, but after all, there was only one Yue Fei in the entire Northern and Southern Song Dynasty, and it was not easy for Fan Zhongyan to coordinate the overall situation as a civilian official, and if he wanted to command more than 100,000 troops to make a defensive posture at any time and adjust the formation, it was naturally not so fast.

This caused him to march quite slowly, from December 17 scouts had already discovered the main movement of the Liao army, to the 18th he received a letter from Wang Deyong asking for help, and then adjusted the team to set off.

From Gaoyang to Baosai, he walked forty or fifty kilometers for four days, and he could only march ten kilometers almost every day, which can be said to be quite difficult.

No way.

The army is bloated, Lao Fan's strategy is excellent, but the actual command is not so strong, coupled with the Song army's unique generals do not know the soldiers, the soldiers do not know the generals, and the soldiers and generals are not familiar with each other, resulting in a serious separation between the upper and lower levels, and it is often difficult for a general to quickly adjust the formation.

Unless Han Xin or Yue Fei comes, he can only maintain a half-combat and half-marching posture, and as soon as there is a stir, he will immediately line up, which can be said to be the classic tactic of Lao Fan, step by step, step by step.

In the face of Lao Fan's tactics like a turtle crawling, if the Liao army retreats immediately at this time, there is obviously no problem at all.

But Jerod really hesitated.

It's still that problem, if you withdraw the troops now, you will go back in disgrace, you won't get any benefits, and you will cause so many casualties, obviously there is no way to give an explanation to the domestic nobles.

Therefore, after thinking about it repeatedly, even if the scout had already reported to him that Fan Zhongyan's main force was marching towards Baosai, Yelu Zongzhen still hadn't made up his mind.

He even naively thought at that moment that Fan Zhongyan's main force had no city cover, and he would definitely have to fight a field battle with them.

He didn't dare to fight with Fan Zhongyan before, because Fan Zhongyan's main force was 1780,000 troops at that time, and he was only 80,000, and Lao Fan still had grenades, and there was a small gap of 100 million points in terms of strength and technology.

Now after joining with Xiao Hui, there are 130,000 cavalry of the Liao State alone, plus the infantry of other nationalities recruited, the total strength is not much different from Fan Zhongyan, even if the Song army is transferred from other places to support, he still has the strength to fight!

Thinking of this, Yelu Zongzhen finally decided to make a field attempt with the Song army, but it really didn't work, he had so many cavalry, he could always run if he couldn't fight!

So on December 22, the second year of Song Baoyuan, the main force of Liao ushered in the main force of Song.

The two sides were locked in a standoff in Pausai.

(End of chapter)