The day after Liu Xie left, Zhou Buyi's arrangements for the Han army to attack Jianye were also completed. The first was the naval force. He ordered Huang Quan's troops to be stationed in Niuzhuji. Under his command were nearly 60,000 men including Deng Dang, Cen Guang, Du Ji, and Jia Kui, to continue to guard against the possible arrival of the Wu Army navy in Jingzhou. Then he strengthened the siege. He ordered Guo Huai to lead Wang Ji, Sun Zi and other 30,000 right-leg troops to be stationed in Piling. They lined up in a line and dug trenches in the local area to continue to cut off Jianye's connection with Wu County. The last step was to prepare for the siege. At this time, Zhou Buyi sent Huo Yi and 10,000 people to monitor the south gate of Jianye. Hu Du led 20,000 people to stop at the west side of Qingxi Muzha to contain the defenders in the city. He himself led the remaining troops. Eighty thousand soldiers personally stormed Stone City northwest of Jianye.
As mentioned earlier, Stone City is located on Qingliang Mountain northwest of Yundu. Although its city is small, its terrain is steep and its defenses are strong, even higher than Jianye. Stone City is located at the junction of the Huai River and the Yangtze River. The river is surging and the river breeze is blowing. It is not known how long it has been hovering here before it polished a natural stone cliff like a knife or an ax. Therefore, it is impossible for the Han army to come from the east. , attack from both sides in the north. The Wu people also took a fancy to this and built a city with stone bricks on the stone cliff. This city is also the only city in the south of the Yangtze River with stone walls. In contrast, Jianye was the political center of the Wu people, but most of its city walls were just wooden fences. This is all because Qingliang Mountain produces its own stones. Sixty miles from the north of the Yangtze River, there are no stones in the mountains, and only in Qingliang Mountain do there appear stones. Such a perfect place for building a city has been favored by people since ancient times, so the ancient Jinling City established by the Chu State is also located in today's Stone City.
Stone City is not big, with a circumference of only about ten miles. There are about 5,000 defenders. Logically speaking, it is more than enough to defend but not enough to attack. However, considering that it is located at the mouth of the Yangtze River, it is the only gap in the Han army's encirclement network against Jianye. Once Huang Quan's troops fail to stop the Jingzhou Navy, Zhou Yu's troops can use it as a stronghold and directly threaten the Han army's flanks. According to the known information, the man guarding Stone City is Yangzhou Zhizhong who is engaged in infantry. He is a famous general in the Wu army second only to Zhang Zhao and Zhou Yu. If he can be captured alive, the guards in Jianye City will be desperate. Bar! Out of all these prudent considerations, Zhou Buyi decided to eradicate this stronghold first.
When the Han army first attacked the city, they were startled when they looked at the walls of Stone City. The green and black brick wall is not high, probably only a little over ten feet, but it is built on a rock wall about two feet high. The red ocher rock wall is sometimes higher and sometimes lower, and a strange line can be clearly seen between the two. The boundary lines together form the walls of Stone City. What is even more eye-catching is that the rock wall is full of traces of long-term weathering and gravel peeling, and there are purple and black rocks in the middle. From a distance, you can vaguely see the ears, eyes, mouth and nose, resembling a ferocious ghost face. . When the soldiers saw a city like this for the first time, they couldn't help but murmur, thinking that there were ghosts and gods in it, and secretly called the Stone City Ghost Face City.
Under Zhou Buji's order, the Han army raised dozens of mountains of earth around the city and filled them with earth and rocks day and night. However, the soil in Qingliang Mountain was more rocky and less soily. When the soldiers were digging, they would hit big rocks from time to time. Not only could they not dig, they would also often damage their pickaxes. This resulted in filling the mountain with half the effort and very slow progress. In contrast, the Wu people had cut down all the trees on the mountain, and then built many simple archery towers with wood on the walls. Now they have specially built archery towers on both sides of the mountain, overlooking the mountain below. When the Han army laboriously hauled earth and rocks to Tushan, the Wu people's dense archers shot down from the archery towers on both sides. Random arrows crisscrossed and rained down from both sides, and the Han army could not look up. After several days of this, the Han army had already suffered thousands of casualties before they even leveled the mountains of earth on top of the city.
When finally the hills were as high as the city wall, the Han army tried to launch an offensive into the city, resulting in even more heavy casualties. The Wu army left holes in the stone walls. When the Han army approached the city, they would stretch out hooks and sickles from the holes and cut the legs of the Han soldiers from bottom to top. The city fell down. Even if a few were lucky enough to reach the city wall, they would be swarmed and besieged by the defenders at the top of the city. They would be instantly killed and injured and unable to gain a foothold at all.
What's even more unfortunate is that after Liu Xie left, the temperature in Jiangnan increased slightly, and the graupel snow turned into winter rain, which continued for days. In this case, the Han people still attacked in the rain. Unexpectedly, many mountains of earth collapsed one after another, and the Han people fell and filled the earth, killing countless people.
While raising the earth mountain, Zhou Buyi also had people dig tunnels to prepare to penetrate the city. After many earthen hills collapsed due to rain, the tunnels slowly extended closer to the base of the city wall. But the Wu army was well prepared for this. As early as when the city was built, the Wu people dug a deep trench around the base of the wall and filled it with rainwater, forming an inner city ditch that surrounded the city. The water in the ditch can be used to resist enemy fire attacks. Once the Han army's tunnel is dug through, the water will flow back into the tunnel. Not only did it mean that all the Han soldiers in the tunnel were drowned. It was also thanks to the collapse of the earth that Zhou Buyi terminated his plan for tunnel operations, otherwise the consequences would be disastrous.
After besieging Stone City for nearly half a month, the city remained strong and the siege made no progress. Zhou Buyi had no choice but to find another strange move. Seeing that the area was very rocky, he ordered the construction of dozens of stone-throwing carts to see if stones could be used to destroy the city wall. But the result was disappointing. The stone-shooting cart could launch stones up to half the size of a man, and the stone wall was different from rammed earth. After three rounds of throwing stones, the stone wall did not move at all. When the Wu people in the city saw this, their morale was greatly boosted, they cheered loudly and taunted the Han troops in the city. When the soldiers of the Han Dynasty saw that the stone-launching chariot that had always been unfavorable in the past had failed to achieve success, they couldn't help but look at each other with a feeling of depression.
When his plan failed, Zhou Buji devised another plan. In the past twenty years, the Han army had launched attacks from land, but due to the Wu people's sufficient preparations and strong city defenses, they all ended in vain. What are the aspects that Wu Ren is not prepared for? Under the winter rain, he saw that the river water at the mouth of the river was settling erratically and repeatedly lapping at the dry cliffs. Looking further up, he saw that the Wu people only had a beacon tower on the city wall by the river, and there were no arrow towers or wooden sheds. He relied on his eyes. After estimating the height of the river surface and the stone wall, a plan suddenly came to my mind.
That night, he ordered Huang Quan to bring in a large ship and temporarily docked twenty miles outside Stone City. Then the craftsmen were summoned urgently and ordered to modify the shore side of the ship and build a two-foot-high platform on it. This platform is four feet long and one foot wide. It can accommodate more than a hundred people standing on it at the same time. There are also steps for getting up and down. Zhou Busuo planned to take them by surprise and directly use the tall hull of the building ship to let the Han army reach the Stone City from the river.
This matter took about two days to prepare. For this reason, the Han army's offensive also stalled for two days, which caused the entire battlefield to fall into rare silence. Before the attack, Zhou Buji made a special inspection of the military camp and saw that many Han soldiers looked depressed. Some people directly asked Zhou Buji: "General, when can we return to the capital?" Zhou Buji was stunned, and then Smiling, he patted the man on the shoulder and said, "It can be as fast as a month or as slow as half a year. There is no rush." Although the Han army had suffered a small setback before, generally speaking, it was smooth sailing. Under a city It was the first time for the Han army to suffer such a setback. Zhou Busuo thought that if this strategy didn't work, he might have to make a long-term plan to withdraw to Jiangbei first.
The time to attack was in the middle of the night. In order to cover up the attack of the building ships, Zhou Buyi once again ordered Yang Qiu to attack Stone City head-on. In the dark night and dark rain, the Han army beat gongs and drums, climbed the earth mountain on muddy water, held up wooden poles high and faced the rain of arrows as they climbed up the city. Then the other hand grasped the long spear and stabbed upward. In the dark night, they could not see the appearance or even the position of the enemy at all, but even so, they still had to attract Wu Jun's attention with flesh and blood. At the same time, the building boat took advantage of the situation and went down the river, suddenly appearing on the river north of Stone City.
Seeing a ship heading straight for the city in the distance, the people of Wu were shocked. At this time, there were only nearly a hundred veterans on the north wall who were resting and taking turns. They could only urgently summon the surrounding soldiers and report to Bu Zhao immediately. When Bu Zhao came in a hurry to help with about 500 people, the huge ship full of Han soldiers was only a few feet away from Stone City.
Seeing that the building boat was about to hit them directly, the Wu people no longer thought about shooting arrows, and immediately lined up on the city wall with their guns. The formation had just been formed, and the side of the building boat was already pressed against the stone wall. The platform on the building ship was only two feet away from the wall. The Han army jumped up and immediately started a hand-to-hand combat with the Wu people. The stone wall here is very narrow, only three feet wide. Two people standing together are so close that they can directly feel the enemy's breathing. In this case, it was not so much a fight as a push. The two sides tried their best to gain a foothold on the wall, and then struggled to push the enemy off the wall. Suddenly, soldiers fell off one after another on both sides of the north wall, either into the water or onto the rocky ground. But when both parties were wearing armor and heavy clothes, there was no difference in the outcome. They fell into the water and were unable to swim, and fell to the ground and were shattered to pieces. It was just a matter of death.
But Bu Zhi could see that the Han army was gradually gaining the upper hand. If this continued, the north wall would be breached in less than an hour. The Han army actually attacked the city from the river, which he never expected. When he was annoyed, he observed the advancing building ship and found that it was not guarded by sterns and green birds. Then he thought with great joy and said in his heart: "The thieves don't know how to fight on the water. How dare a building ship come so far?" He immediately called for it. The personal guards found a small boat and carried it to the water gate in the northwest corner of Stone City. Then he asked people to fill the boat with dry firewood, fill it with kerosene, immediately light it and let it float down the river.
The Han army saw a blazing fire ship suddenly appear at the stern of the ship. It was approaching the stern of the ship in an instant. In a hurry, they had to use a long stick to hold it back. However, it was very hot nearby and the smoke was so thick that it soon became unbearable. , we can only ask people to take turns to support. But not long after, the Wu people lit a second fire ship at the water gate. Upon seeing this, the Han army knew that the offensive could not last long, and in desperation, they could only decide to withdraw. Due to the sudden incident, many Han troops who came to the city were not aware of the plight of the building ship and did not hear the order to return to the ship, so they continued to fight on the wall. The Han soldiers on the building ship could not hold on and finally left hastily. As a result, about a hundred Han soldiers did not return to the ship and died tragically under the siege of the Wu army.
This time the offensive against Stone City ended in failure. The transcoding has been serious recently, which makes us more motivated and updates faster. Please use your little hands to exit the reading mode. Thanks
