Chapter 174: Cutting out walls and hanging buildings
Before he finished listening to Niu Youtian's introduction, Zhang Hu had a vague feeling in his heart: he had met a powerful enemy, and the dog officer of Kaifeng Mansion was different from others!
For a moment, Zhang Hu was a little hesitant about whether to continue fighting with the Kaifeng Mansion. However, on second thought, I still have to fight. First of all, most of the people in my group have never fought any hard battles - many veterans died in Sichuan. If they encounter a fortified city, they will avoid it and just rely on looting the countryside. The supplies in the countryside are limited and they cannot support so many people. Sooner or later, everyone will fall apart. Secondly, Gongchang Mansion is an example. If Kaifeng Mansion comes here again, if the dog officials see that they can defend the city as long as they fight to the death, future battles will definitely become more and more difficult to fight. Thirdly, to the west, The threat of reinforcements has completely disappeared. To the north is the raging Yellow River, and to the southwest is Fang Ge sweeping away. Kaifeng Mansion has become an isolated city with no foreign aid. If you leave without fighting, not only will your prestige plummet, but also your own prestige will plummet. Maintaining morale is a problem! Fourth, there are a lot of cannon fodder in the camp. Although there will definitely be some losses if the auxiliary troops are deployed to supervise the battle, the vast majority of the dead will definitely be civilians, so there is nothing to feel bad about. Well, not only will we fight, we will definitely massacre the city after we defeat them, so that all the dog officials will open their eyes wide and take a closer look at the consequences of resistance!
However, since there are no tricks, there is no other way but to attack the city step by step.
Both Zhang Hu and Niu Youtian heard that Mr. Shu said that in siege warfare, one should "encircle three towers": leaving an escape route for the defenders. Otherwise, if the defenders are surrounded by iron walls on all sides, they will not be able to escape. If they insist on defending, it will greatly increase the difficulty of attacking the city. To the north is the Yellow River, and the focus of the attack is at the west gate. There are also large groups of troops stationed in the south, and Fang Ge is still far away. Therefore, the two of them still follow the original plan and continue to attack in the west and south of the city. Zhang Hu even intends to move the troops in the east of the city. Withdraw some, hoping that the defenders can break out from there - as long as the dog officers escape, breaking the city will be just a matter of searching for things. This arrangement soon made Zhang Hu regret it.
At this point, the siege entered the typical offensive and defensive mode of that era. Thousands of refugees outside the city filled the trenches with sacks in their hands under the coercion of the war supervisors. On the city, they attacked with arrows and cannons. Every time a section of the trench was filled, a large group of people rushed over with ladders and carts. When they got to the wall, the defenders and the common people who assisted in the defense threw rocks, oil and boiled gold juice... The difference from the past was that Zhang Hu used a new technology: "gouging out the wall."
The so-called wall removal means that the attackers push carts or hold up door panels and rush to the city walls, erect them and build them under the city wall. A relatively safe triangular space is formed below, and people can hide in it and use pickaxes or iron drills to dig out the walls. City bricks.
Like almost all cities in the Ming Dynasty, Kaifeng's city walls are made of blue bricks and rammed earth. The main reason for adopting this method is its high efficiency and extremely fast construction speed: Taizu began to build cities on a large scale in the early years of Hongwu, and it took only about ten years for most of the strategically important cities in the vast territory of the empire to be built. Completed.
The specific method is to first use solid boulders as the wall foundation, then rammed earth to build the main body of the city wall, and finally build a kiln nearby to bake bricks and wrap them around the rammed earth layer. Earth was taken around the outer circle of the planned city. As the city wall was heightened, a circular moat gradually took shape. In ancient times, there were forest vegetation everywhere, and fuel for kilns was available everywhere. Therefore, to this day we can often find kiln sites located by the river near many ancient cities, or place names with the word "kiln" left behind.
Zhang Hu's wall-cutting skills were learned when he attacked those fortresses in Xingdu Division, Shaanxi Province. However, most of the fortresses he had to deal with there were just rammed earth walls. Here in Kaifeng Mansion, he had to first pry off the walls wrapped around the rammed earth walls. blue bricks, and then dig the rammed earth layer inside - there is no need to dig to the inner wall, just dig dozens of holes along one side of the city wall. As long as you dig deep enough, the section of the city wall that has lost the support of the wall foundation will be absorbed by its own weight. Overwhelm comes sooner or later.
It was the first time for Lu Shen, Yang Zhongguo and other civil and military officials on the wall to see this kind of siege technique, and they were all as anxious as ants on a hot pot. There are obstacles in the way, and traditional defense methods such as throwing stones and gold juice are almost ineffective. Even if the asphalt is boiled and poured down and ignited, the thieves will flee to the other side of the door and continue digging! Seeing that the defenders were helpless, the thieves brought more door panels, and the outside of the new door panels was coated with a thick layer of wet mud! The defenders on the wall tried their best to fire arrows, but there were too many thieves, and such a long wall could not be defended. If this continued, the foundation of the wall would be dug down by the thieves sooner or later.
No, we still have to throw rocks, big rocks! Jiang Shide's soldiers shouted and ordered Ding Zhuang, who was assisting in the defense, to put down the stones that could be moved by one person. Two or three people worked together to lift a boulder of one or two hundred kilograms and smash it down... However, there were heavy casualties. After four or five places were smashed, the thieves mobilized many archers and hid behind large shields to shoot at the strong men on the wall. The movement of several people working together to lift the rock was naturally slow. In order to ensure the accuracy of falling rocks, they also had to attack with probes. There were too many opportunities. As long as one person is injured by the arrow and lets go, his companions will all be injured by the unbalanced rocks. The fear spread quickly, the young men's movements became slower and slower, and their eyes became nervous and hesitant.
The promotion officer Ji Shu, who was sweating profusely and with a charred face, was bending over to throw asphalt chunks into the iron pot. He didn't hear the "Sir, Sir" greetings, and then saw the filthy mess through the stove fire. Two trouser legs, looking up, a scholar-looking man stood opposite. Well, he vaguely looks like a scholar - he is wearing a dirty blue gown with a cloth belt around his waist. The hem of the gown is tucked into the cloth belt. The scribe's scarf on his head is tilted, and his face, His body and hands were stained with sweat and mud. It was obvious that this person had been busy on the wall. Seeing Ji Shu looking over, he hurriedly saluted and said "Sir" again. Ji Shu was so anxious, what time had it been, and he still said this: "What's the matter, tell me quickly!"
The scholar in blue shirt bowed again: "My lord, student Zhang Jian has figured out a way to defeat the enemy."
Ji Shu was even more angry after hearing this: The battle between the two armies was about morale, numbers, and equipment training. The so-called tips and tricks in the book are all nonsense. Could this person have made himself stupid by reading the book? However, Guochao always respected scholars and responded vaguely: "If you have any clever ideas, please tell me quickly. I am very busy."
The scholar Zhang Jian said: "The fuel is limited and there are many thieves. Sir, the students thought we could build a 'hanging tower' to break it."
Ji Shu was also worried about the few asphalt blocks left. When he heard this, he felt moved and asked suspiciously: "Xuanlou? What is a Xuanlou?"
Zhang Jian explained it with gestures and words. Seeing that Ji Shu couldn't understand for a while, he simply picked up a wooden stick with one end burned black and sketched it on the ground. Before Zhang Jian could finish the painting, Ji Shu was overjoyed and praised it loudly, then called a few officials and gave the instructions in this way. Soon, the government officials hired several carpenters. Under Zhang Jian's explanation, the carpenters built a sample hanging building in just over an hour. A group of adults gathered around, and the soldiers practiced on the inner wall, with excellent results! Soon, all the carpenters and apprentices in Kaifeng Prefecture were gathered together, and the stock of wooden boards in the coffin shop and furniture shop was requisitioned.
The sun is slightly westward. Zhang Hu, Niu Youtian and others who were watching the battle from a distance found that there were more people on the wall, but the number of bricks dropped was obviously much less. They were wondering what happened when dozens of people suddenly appeared between the walls. A small wooden house, well, it would be more appropriate to say it is a large wooden box as big as a small house. Under the box is a long thick wooden board. One end of the board is pulled by a large group of people in the wall. The other end is connected to the box and serves as a floor, walkway and support. The overall length can span three or more wall stacks. The defenders in the wall worked together to drag the wooden box out of the wall little by little. Then, the wooden box fired dense arrows at the brothers who were hiding under the wall and gouging out the wall in the blind spot!
It takes a long time to pry the thick blue city bricks. After picking off five or six bricks, you can dig inside again. However, dealing with a solid layer of rammed earth is not necessarily much easier than digging out wall bricks - for many key projects, the acceptance criteria for rammed earth walls are based on "the iron cone cannot reach an inch". Kaifeng Mansion, no doubt It is one of such key projects. At this time, most of the guys who were digging out the wall had just pried off three or five wall bricks. The fastest progress was just digging a hole more than a foot deep in the rammed earth layer. The supports can only block attacks from directly above, and both sides are exposed to the attack range of the archers in the hanging building. They are several feet away, and they are condescending. Each wooden box - the hanging building in Zhang Jian's mouth, The soldiers shot arrows at the guys who were gouging out the wall in the shooting circle on the left and right, and screams of misery broke out all over the place!
Zhang Hu's archers, who were responsible for covering the top of the city and shooting at the top of the city, had nothing to do with the hanging tower: half-inch thick wooden boards were enough to block all arrows and crossbow arrows. Unless they used big ones such as bed crossbows or trebuchets, they could only watch. The defenders inside calmly carried out a unilateral massacre!
In addition to feather arrows, Zhang Hu discovered that the defenders also used a new weapon: explosive cans. After a little observation, Zhang Hu figured out the secret: it was just an ordinary clay pot, stuffed with gunpowder and gravel, sealed with mud and leaving a fuse outside, lit and thrown down! Some fuses are left too long and pose no threat if they fall to pieces and fall to pieces, but those that explode in the air or near the ground can often injure many people nearby.
The dog officers and soldiers in the hanging building would make a fuss every time they shot someone, and the guys on the other end of the wall pulling the planks would burst into cheers in response, and the whole wall was filled with cheers. Zhang Hu and Niu Youtian watched bitterly. From time to time, soldiers ran out of the hanging building on the wooden walkway, took bundles of arrows or cloth bags filled with explosive cans from the defenders on the wall, and ran back to wait. There are no more living targets in this area. They will shout hello and point to other places, so the strong men on the wall work together to drag the hanging building back, and then slowly push it out from another place... more What's annoying is that some small disputes actually broke out on the wall: some guys were pulling the archers who were about to step into the hanging building, gesticulating excitedly, although they were far away and couldn't hear what they were arguing about. , look at the movements, there is no doubt that they are fighting to get in and attack below! "Mom, not only did you not run away, but you also fought to join the war! How can we fight this battle?" Niu Youtian spat hard on the ground - if he knew, Zhang Jian who came up with this idea was the one he met outside the city the day before yesterday The guy who arrived was so anxious that he didn't know how angry he would be.
At one place, two places, five or six places, or a dozen places, a long line of small black spots suddenly appeared under the wall, which was the guys who were digging at the root of the wall and running back. The archers who served as cover were also supervising the battle team. They could not shoot the defenders in the hanging building, so they aimed their bows and arrows at them...
"Ming Jin, please withdraw your troops." Zhang Hu ordered helplessly.
Most of the guys who dug out the wall were common people. Of course, King Zhang would not begrudge the lives of these people. However, this tactic has failed. Even if they were all shot, what would be the point besides wasting arrows? It's better to keep them and let them continue to attack tomorrow and consume the defenders' supplies.
