The night before Liu Chengzong arrived at Liangzhou City, the ghost soldiers of the two armies outside the west gate of Liangzhou City were disrupted.
But it was not completely chaotic. The goals of the two ghost soldiers were very clear. The Liangzhou ghost soldiers wanted to rush into the Wengcheng, while the Ganzhou ghost soldiers wanted to hold down the Liangzhou ghost soldiers and drive them outside the city.
For the Ganzhou soldiers, they could not get into this city because Hong Chengchou's rule was that when the ghost soldiers returned to the city, they would first stay in Yuecheng and be led into Wengcheng by the captain of the ghost soldiers. Then the original captain in the city would call out their names and enter. Return to the city.
Ganzhou soldiers could not even enter Yuecheng.
The Wengcheng is an outer city built at the city gate. In essence, it has eight words: catch turtles in the urn, and beat dogs with the door closed.
In some large inland cities with convenient transportation, the defensive function of the entire city defense system has given way to civilian convenience, and the urn gates will be built on the front to facilitate pedestrians. However, in urn cities that are formally used for military defense, the gates are often opened on the side.
For example, the west gate of Liangzhou is due west, but a circle of urn city protrudes outside the west gate. The gate of the urn city opens to the south, and outside the west urn city, a moon city is set up.
The Moon City is similar to the Weng City, but its design purpose is different from the Weng City. The height of the Moon City wall is much lower than that of the main city wall, and the area inside the city is also very small. It is less than five meters deep and no more than 40 meters wide. It can almost be said that It's just a small corridor wrapped in a city wall.
Liangzhou is an ancient city in the Tang Dynasty. Although it was only covered with bricks in the second year of Wanli, its construction logic is an old-fashioned city wall. The person who built it was Li Gui, who briefly proclaimed himself emperor after separatizing Hexi in the late Sui and early Tang dynasties.
At that time, catapults were not very popular in the world, and during the period when the heroes were fighting for hegemony, they paid special attention to the construction of city defenses. Therefore, the city wall has two prominent characters: high and thick.
At that time, the city was four feet eight feet high and the city wall foundation was eight feet thick. In the early Ming Dynasty, Pu Ying was ordered to build another three feet to the height, reaching a height of five feet one foot. In the second year of Wanli, it was completely covered with bricks.
With such a thickness of wall foundation, it basically can no longer be called a wall. To put it bluntly, it is a ridge lying on the ground.
Therefore, it looks particularly majestic. Tall city walls like this were almost destroyed in the era when Huihui artillery was prevalent. Today, city walls are as low as two feet and as tall as three feet. Liangzhou survived the war The city is undoubtedly a monster.
The Ximen defense system was built by Song Sheng, the Marquis of Xining, who was powerful in the northwest in the early Ming Dynasty. The firearms used on the battlefield at that time had a relatively short range, and the moon city wall was low and small, so that the defenders on the Weng city wall could compete with the moon city defenders. The army also shot at the invading enemies outside the city.
In addition, the Moon City Gate opens to the north.
This means that an army attacked the city. After filling in the trenches, breaking down the sheep and horse wall, crossing the suspension bridge, and reaching the west of Liangzhou City with difficulty, they found that there was no city gate in front of them, only an eight-meter-high and twenty-meter-thick wall. Behind the moon city wall is an urn city wall that is sixteen meters high and more than twenty meters thick.
On the two city walls, the defenders were frantically throwing arrows, guns and shells.
After being intensively attacked by the defenders of Yuecheng, Wengcheng, and the city walls on both sides, the siege army walked north around the city wall and began to attack the Yuecheng Gate facing due north.
After finally opening the city gate, there was a very narrow Moon City inside, which could only accommodate six or seven people. The army was stuck outside the Moon City. Most of the siege equipment could not pass through the Moon City. Small groups were heading towards the Moon City. Entering inside, they were bombarded by the defenders on all sides of the Moon City. They passed through the Moon City for more than 40 meters and walked all the way to the south before they could attack the Wengcheng Gate that opened to the south. ….
The offensive has basically stopped here. How can the few people who have entered Yuecheng break the Wengcheng Gate? Even if it is broken, with Yuecheng, a small city that controls the flow of people, the enemy-killing efficiency of the defenders on Wengcheng will definitely exceed the replenishment speed of the attacking army.
This was also the reason why Hong Chengchou ordered the Liangzhou garrison to open and close the outer city gate. My city gate is open. You can go in at any time. Anyway, if you go in, you will die.
If the city gate cannot be breached, the city wall must be attacked. The brick-clad rammed earth wall that is narrow at the top and wide at the bottom, with a thickness of more than 20 meters at the bottom, is waiting to be attacked. Its base is thicker than Zhu Yuanzhang's Nanjing City Wall.
In this city, if hundreds of infantry sneak into Moon City, they will die.
Bee Tail Needle is not that knowledgeable, but the defense plan of Liangzhou City has been distributed to the entire army. Moreover, Liu Chengzong did not let him attack the city. He just played it out of fun and used ghost soldiers to tease the ghost soldiers of the defenders. See, Let’s see who is the ghost
.
The two armies fought chaotically outside the city under the light of bonfires. When they reached a certain point, neither side's artillery dared to shoot at them. The ghost soldiers who fled to the city gate called the door, but the defenders did not dare to let them in. They waited until both sides were tired of fighting. , ran away and scattered, the ghost soldiers of the Ganzhou Battalion also withdrew from the battlefield with their prisoners, and the city barely accommodated less than a hundred people into the city.
That night, Li Hongsi decided that he would never play tricks with Liu Chengzong's army again. You are tossing and tossing outside the city as much as you like. Isn't it okay if I don't go out?
As a result, the next day, Li Hongsi had just fallen asleep when Liu Shaozong, who replaced him, shouted: "Commander, the bandits outside the city have brought a red barbarian cannon!"
Li Hongsi hadn't had a good sleep for a long time. He was seriously sleep deprived. When he was woken up, he got angry and said: "Who has never seen the red barbarian cannon? I still have three thieves on my hands." Where is the young general, Liu Chengzong has the Red Yi Cannon, I know it!"
Li Hongsi became even more angry when he mentioned the little general who countered the rebels. It was originally Gao Yingxiang's version of the Lion Cannon that he had copied. There were originally twenty of them. They had been successful in the counter-insurgency war in Shaanxi. Ten of them were destroyed in the war over the years, and one in Ganzhou was destroyed. There was a chaotic battle. After the battle, only three gates were left after retreating.
The first thing he did when he retreated to Liangzhou Guards was to ask the military craftsmen to make clay molds for the cannons. Now the clay molds that were dried were almost ready for use. He wanted to make thirty more cannons. He was used to using this kind of cannon. The power is appropriate, convenient and reliable.
But Liu Shaozong didn't know about Liu Chengzong's Hongyi Pao, so he stared when he heard it: The commander-in-chief understands it very well.
He quickly said: "Commander, do you know that your general who is a thief general is different from Liu Chengzong's general who is a thief?"
Li Hongsi asked himself that he was the one in the northwest who knew a lot about the military equipment of the Marshal's Mansion, so he casually said: "The common thief general is greater than his thief general!"
This is indeed true. The young general Ping Thief imitated Gao Yingxiang’s version of the lion cannon, which weighed three hundred kilograms. The copper lion cannon installed by Liu Chengzong was the later improved version of the rogue bandits, weighing two hundred kilograms. Its power and range were slightly inferior. But it has low logistics requirements and higher mobility.
When Liu Shaozong heard this, he looked a little strange: "Commander, you should follow me to the west wall. His thief general is bigger than yours, much bigger."
When Li Hongsi ascended the city, he found that the siege camp outside the city had changed from the earlier rotating siege camp of two to three thousand people to a boundless company camp of thousands of people. The frontline troops also advanced sporadically to four miles away from the city. The Qing's sergeants were hard at work connecting several battalions to form criss-crossing trenches. ….
At the forefront of those trenches, with just a cursory glance, he saw many people who looked like officers from the Marshal's Office looking toward the city with binoculars.
Following Liu Shaozong's guidance, Li Hongsi finally saw Liu Chengzong's thief general in his mouth. It was a pig iron cannon nearly three feet tall. It used the Marshal's Army's signature two-wheeled artillery cart. The wheels were as wide as pillars and formed in groups. The soldiers of the team were adjusting the muzzle of the cannon.
Li Hongsi just glanced at it and couldn't move his eyes away from the cannon.
It's not that he has never seen such a cannon. He has seen it. The Ming Dynasty imitated the Red Yi Cannon for the first time at the central level. The imitation was a cannon of this caliber and length, which was moved from a ship.
Last year alone, the imperial court allocated 137 Western artillery pieces and 140,000 jins of saltpeter to the Xuanfu town. However, in field battles, especially in the northwest battlefield, there is no need for such artillery... This thing is The officers and soldiers have no need at all.
So much so that Li Hongsi had no concept of such a cannon appearing on the battlefield.
Just when he was shocked by Liu Chengzong's twenty-pound cannon, Liu Chengzong was holding a telescope outside the city, and he was also confused about Liangzhou City - in what era, how could there be such a high city?
For the generals of this era, the ancient city of Liangzhou was confusing to everyone who saw it.
The development of military technology has always been a systematic way of adapting to the enemy's conditions. Wherever there is a spear, there is a shield. Most of the time, a dynamic offensive and defensive balance is achieved. When a certain technology makes great progress, the balance will be broken in a short period of time, but in the end As technology spreads, the balance will return.
The same is true for the city wall. In the era when siege towers and other methods were mainly used to suppress the city defenders, the city wall was built higher and higher. This Liangzhou City is a relic of that era, but this trend was widely used by the Mongols. The cannon changed.
The higher
The city wall means that the thicker the base, the thinner the top, and the easier it is to be hit by boulders thrown by catapults... By the Ming Dynasty, the weapons responsible for defending and suppressing the city walls were basically artillery.
The suppression ability has become stronger, and the defensive ability has also become stronger. At this time, spending a lot of energy to make the city wall as high as one foot or two feet will have little meaning, and the cost performance will become lower.
Therefore, the current walls of county towns and acropolis are basically two feet high, which is enough.
Liu Chengzong stared at the city carefully with a telescope, slowly shook his head and said: "This is a relic that symbolizes the three major martial arts of the Ming Dynasty."
Bee Tail Needle, who was standing by his side and telling Liu Chengzong about the chaos of the ghost soldiers last night, heard this emotion and couldn't help but curiously asked: "The commander-in-chief is talking about the three major campaigns?"
"Three major campaigns?" Liu Chengzong smiled and shook his head, pointing to Liangzhou City and explaining: "This is an ancient city. Only ancient cities can build the city walls so high. I'm talking about the recovery of Yanyun, Yungui and Hexi in the early Ming Dynasty."
"Hexi was envoyed by the Guiyi Army of the Jutang Dynasty; Yanyun Sixteen Prefectures ceded territory from Shi Jingtang to ask for help, both of which had been in the hands of Hu Chen for hundreds of years. The Ming army marched into Hexi from Guanzhong and wanted to set up a special translation office. I also wrote in Xincheng Mansion There is a "Hexi Translation" compiled at that time, and the recovery of Hexi and Yanyun is almost a restart of the overseas expedition."
"Now, the ancestors of all people in Hexi came from the fertile hinterland of the Central Plains thousands of miles away, packed up their bed with their mothers, aunts and children, and went to the frontier to kill people and eat sand."...
After saying that, Liu Chengzong patted Beetail Needle on the shoulder and said with a smile: "Read more in your spare time... Who is the guard of this city?"
"Ding Guodong said it was a man named Liu Shaozong during the day, and I was dealing with Deputy Commander-in-Chief Li Hongsi at night. How about I go wake up Tang Mingshi, who was captured at night, and ask?"
Mentioning Tang Mingshi, Liu Chengzong couldn't help but smile and waved his hands: "Stop calling him, find someone to deliver a letter to the city."
Tang Mingshi is an old unlucky man. He got a stick in the early morning and slept soundly. He still hasn't woken up yet.
Liu Chengzong estimated that the bone wound he suffered was fine. It was just that he had been tormented by Bee Tail Needle and Ding Guodong in the past few days and dared not sleep every day. Now that he was captured, he did not want to be interrogated for information and could still catch up on his sleep, so he I covered my head and fell asleep hard.
So he had no idea of waking up Tang Mingshi, but just wanted to let him sleep and see how long he could sleep.
A moment later, a letter was shot onto the Moon City by soldiers of the Marshal's Army. Soon the defenders found Li Hongsi and Liu Shaozong with the letter and said, "General, this is a letter from the enemy to General Liu."
Li Hongsi didn't say much. He took the letter and handed it directly to Liu Shaozong, saying, "Look at what's written."
Liu Shaozong opened the letter. The content of the letter was very short. It seemed to be just a few sentences, but it made him look like he had eaten a fly. He was disgusted from beginning to end. In the end, he simply waved his hand and handed the letter to Li Hongsi: " Look, Commander, this guy is... so polite!"
Li Hongsi was happy when he looked up the letter. When he was in Luotuo City, Liu Chengzong also sent someone to give him a letter to persuade him to surrender. The letter also came from his brother and asked him to surrender.
Although this letter does not ask Liu Shaozong to surrender, the wording is still very kind. It probably means that he has no ill intentions towards Liangzhou City, and if you don't want to surrender, just forget it.
However, a new cannon was accidentally cast in the army. The cannon had not yet been tested and did not dare to be mass-produced. Thinking of the city of Liangzhou, I decided to give it a try. After a while, three cannons were fired. In order to avoid accidental damage, brother Wanwang temporarily withdrew the Xicheng defenders. , so as not to hurt the harmony, I would be very grateful.
After reading the letter, Li Hongsi was so angry that he laughed. He took the letter and said to Liu Shaozong: "He also accidentally became an artillery piece. By chance?"
It's as if this cannon was picked up and left here to synthesize a weapon. You can cast the cannon and open the clay mold without even knowing what you are making?
Liu Shaozong said expressionlessly: "This is to tell you and me that his army can forge cannons and is preparing to forge large quantities of heavy cannons... to show off his power."
"That's right." Li Hongsi nodded and said: "I have been fighting with him since he entered Jiayuguan. I saw his letters not once or twice, but also three times. First, he is the best at breaking the knot of corporals, and he wins people over by persuading them to surrender. Confused; the second is that soldiers will use their lives and are good at using people's strength. After all, who is willing to lead soldiers and sacrifice their lives for him? He really calls people brother. I heard people say that he is like this in the army.
One by one, they are all brothers who lead the troops. "
Liu Shaozong asked: "What about the third one?"
"Third?" Li Hongsi smiled and said, "The third is that he is good at using cannons. Once the ecstasy soup is not finished, he will pull out dozens of artifacts and blast people to pieces... I guess he will be able to do it now. I already have a dry clay mold of a heavy cannon in my hand."
"Then if he really forges cannons under the city and makes a bunch of these things." Liu Shaozong shook his head and said, "I'm afraid Liangzhou City is not easy to defend. The city is too high."
"fine."
Li Hongsi shook his head and said: "Hanhan is a smart man and loves reputation very much. He must have known that there is not much food and grass in the city and it will not be beneficial to him to seize the city. He just pulled out the cannon to intimidate and frighten us. In this way, we will delay for a while." Wait, let Lin Shen write the reply later."
General Lin Shen was Lin Chengdong, who gave up his camp equipment and formally withdrew from the battlefield. He was also on the city at this time. Hearing this, he asked, "What does the commander mean by this?"
"You are neither the one with the highest official position nor the guard general of Liangzhou. Even if you write back to him and agree to something, we all know that it is a delaying tactic and the court will not blame you."
Li Hongsi said: "Just write to him and tell him that you are the guard now, and Liangzhou has no intention to be an enemy of him and let him go to Long. If the imperial army can be blocked to the east of Guyuan, then Liangzhou will Surrendered... He can't even cross the Gulang Gorge."
Capture the Deer Marquis
