According to the war rules of this era, Zhou Yu first sent an envoy to send Zhang Xi a letter persuading him to surrender.
First of all, this is an ancient etiquette. It would be better if you can directly persuade them to surrender. If not, it is also in line with etiquette to start fighting again.
Secondly, this is for the envoys to come over to find out the truth. At least they have to find out who the defender of the city is, so that they can formulate an siege plan based on his style and weaknesses.
But Zhou Yu miscalculated this time, because the man guarding the city was named Zhang Xi, who was the new postal governor of Jiangxia.
Who is Zhang Xi? !
Zhou Yu said that he didn't know. He asked all the generals in the army and no one had heard of this person.
If you haven't heard of it, then you haven't heard of it. Anyway, these days, the unknown general Zhou Yu has encountered quite a few, and most of them are incompetent, so there is no need to worry too much.
Seeing that Zhou Yu failed to persuade him to surrender, he immediately began to prepare arrangements for the siege.
First, Lu Meng was asked to lead an army to the southeast corner of Hubei City to contain Wei Yan's troops so that Wei Yan could not respond to the defenders in the city in time. Then he commanded the army himself and began to attack Hubei City.
This is a very conventional way of advancing. Zhou Yu did not plan to use any tactics from the beginning. These days, only the disadvantaged side will frequently use tricks, and the advantaged side will crush them openly.
The first attack was a tentative attack. Zhou Yu commanded his soldiers to go into battle with hooks and ladders to test the weak points of the city defense on both sides.
The geographical location of Echeng is quite special. It faces the river to the east and the tidal flats along the river outside the city.
Now Jiangdong's navy was cut off in the south, and Wei Yan was blocking the southeast corner. Jiangdong's army had no way to bypass Wei Yan or launch a beach landing on the river, so the east gate was not attacked by Jiangdong's army.
The north is inland of Jiangxia, and across the river is Zhu County. It is impossible for Zhou Yu to risk being attacked from both sides and send his soldiers to the north gate to attack.
Therefore, Zhou Yu mainly attacked the south gate and west gate of E County.
The tentative attack would not last long. In about half an hour, Zhou Yu withdrew the attacking troops.
From the current point of view, this unknown city guard named Zhang Xi has some abilities. After half an hour of tentative attack, Zhou Yu did not find the so-called defensive weakness. Hubei's defense is quite methodical.
But this was within Zhou Yu's expectation.
After resting for a quarter of an hour, Zhou Yu sent out the siege troops again. This time it was not a tentative attack. Instead, he directly brought most of the siege equipment and officially started to attack the city.
Zhang Xi stood at the top of the city wall of E City, looking at the dense crowds of Jiangdong soldiers coming under the city wall, and swallowed to relieve his nervousness.
Zhang Xi was actually quite nervous about Zhou Yu's first trial attack. This was Zhang Xi's first immersive experience of defending the city. Seeing so many people, they were like ants, densely packed towards him. Coming up, Zhang Xi was really frightened.
Whether it was fighting Cao Ren or Li Dian, although Zhang Xi went with the army, he was only the deputy general, and the commander was Zhang Fei. All command arrangements were made by Zhang Fei, and Zhang Xi just followed orders and checked for leaks and filled the gaps.
The only command opportunity was when Zhang Fei arranged everything and handed it over to Zhang Xi. All Zhang Xi had to do was continue Zhang Fei's battle plan.
But now, Zhang Xi is the defender of the city. He decides everything by himself and makes all the arrangements for defending the city. If he is attacked by Jiangdong's army, he may not have anywhere to run. If you do well, you will die.
In this case, it would be strange not to be nervous.
But fortunately, Zhou Yu only launched a tentative attack, and Zhang Xi also delegated the power to defend the city to Kou Feng early, so he was not affected by Zhang Xi's nervousness.
But now, although Jiangdong Army has invested more siege soldiers than the first time and has a lot of siege equipment to help, Zhang Xi is not as nervous as he was the first time.
After the first battle of defending the city, Zhang Xi found that there seemed to be no big problem with his strategy of defending the city. At least he repelled Jiangdong Army's first attack. This gave Zhang Xi some confidence and he no longer had to be so anxious.
With confidence, Zhang Xi always paid attention to the situation on the battlefield to see if there were any emergencies on any side, so that he could quickly send people to support him. If any defensive measures were not in place, he would quickly find ways to remedy them.
Finally, there were no mistakes.
Defending the city is basically a matter of rules and regulations. As long as the commander is calm and can issue correct orders in time, the soldiers will not panic. If the soldiers do not panic and act according to the law, they will naturally not allow the city to be attacked. Is there any opportunity to take advantage of?
After all, for the siege side, the defenders really took advantage.
Now for Zhang Xi, the first test has come - Jiangdong Army's arrow rain suppression.
When attacking a city, the siege team would first fire a shower of arrows to cover the siege soldiers as they approached the city wall.
At this time, the soldiers guarding the city would also respond by shooting arrows to prevent these enemy soldiers from approaching.
The first round is a battle of bows and arrows.
The advantage of the defenders is that they have city walls, the soldiers stand high, and their bows and arrows can shoot far, which can easily cause fire suppression.
Moreover, E City also has a great weapon for defending the city - the bed crossbow.
The bed crossbow has a long range and is very powerful. One crossbow arrow can often penetrate three or four soldiers. It is simply an artillery piece of this era.
But unfortunately, bed crossbows are rare, have a slow rate of fire, and are difficult to move. They are generally used for fixed-point strikes. They cannot be fully suppressed by fire. They will eventually be approached by enemy soldiers near the city wall.
Moreover, Zhang Xi did not dare to use it too much, for fear that the enemy might have a trebuchet crossbow. It was too troublesome to operate, and it was not very convenient to move. If one was destroyed, one would be missing. If you can save some, use it as much as possible. Use it wisely.
When Jiangdong's soldiers get close to the city wall, the suppressive firepower of the arrow rain will weaken. This is when the soldiers of both sides fight for their lives.
At this time, Zhang Xi will face the second test-Jiangdong's siege equipment.
Zhang Xi has already prepared forks for things like hook ladders. Although there are hooks on the head of the hook ladders that can hook the city wall, you can always push them a few more times. Not all hook ladders are so coincidental. It can get stuck in the cracks of city wall bricks.
In addition, the head of the fork pole is the head of the Changge. Even if you don't push the hook ladder, you can still kill the enemy with the head.
If there are few people, push and pull on the wall flatly to prevent enemy soldiers from climbing up. If there are many enemies, risk getting closer and smash them down with rolling stones and oak trees, or pour gold juice directly on them.
As for the ladder and the crash car, the ladder Zhang Xi has already had countermeasures. For the time being, he has no intention of starting Wei Yan. Instead, he will let the crash car play to see what the effect of the crash is.
The result made Zhang Xi overjoyed. A car crash was simply the nemesis of the ladder.
It doesn’t take much, just four or five hits, and the ladders of these improvised ladders will fall apart. How can a ladder climb the city wall without its ladder? !
As for charging, this is a troublesome thing.
Zhang Xi's only way is to shoot with a crossbow when the charging car is not close, and try to destroy the charging car on the way forward.
But in case it fails to be destroyed, Kou Feng must lead the guards to fight out when the chariot is about to approach the city gate, trying to kill the enemy and burn the chariot.
This is actually very dangerous. If Kou Feng fails to kill the enemy in time and is instead surrounded by enemy troops, the city gate will be in danger.
Therefore, Zhang Xi handed over all his guards, a total of fifty Yuanyang Formation soldiers, to Kou Feng. Only these soldiers could be sure to kill Jiangdong's army in a short time and burn down the chariots.
However, this kind of thing can only be done one by one. Zhou Yu is not a fool.
The first time, you can say that you bullied Jiang Dongjun because he didn't know the power of the Yuanyang Formation, so he was caught off guard and burned down the charger.
But if Zhou Yu had not responded to the second attack, he would have left such a great reputation in history for nothing.
The coordination and combat effectiveness of the Yuanyang Formation are naturally unparalleled in this era, but the problem is that Zhang Xi has too few people who know the Yuanyang Formation.
Zhou Yu doesn't even need to fight you. He can send five hundred people to surround you, which is enough for him to command his chariots to break through the city gate.
Therefore, when Zhou Yu sent out the second batch of charging vehicles to attack the city gate, Zhang Xi decisively asked Kou Feng to send a signal and summon Wei Yan for help.
As for Wei Yan, there has been no movement so far, and he has maintained a confrontation with Lu Meng. It seems that the Jiangdong Army is attacking now, not his own general's city.
But when Zhang Xi gave the order, Lu Meng realized something was wrong.
There was still no movement in the Wei Yan camp in front of him. The soldiers in the camp were still holding on to the camp, and they didn't seem to be ready to move out.
At that time, Lu Meng was still wondering whether this was an internal strife in the Jiangxia army. The general in this camp had no intention of saving Echeng? !
Then, Lu Meng discovered that a group of troops suddenly appeared behind him. They were not going to rescue Echeng, but were directly heading towards his rear army to kill them.
Because the camp was small, Zhou Yu judged that the number of soldiers in the camp would not exceed 1,000 at most, so only 2,000 soldiers and horses were given to Lu Meng to restrain him.
Lü Meng didn't have many people, so he was suddenly attacked from behind. Lü Meng immediately ordered the entire army to turn back to meet the enemy.
But before Lü Meng's order reached the rear army, he saw the camp gate in front of him opened. Wei Yan rode out with a sword in hand and rushed out at the lead, heading straight for Lü Meng's general's flag.
Wei Yan grasped this timing just right. It was just when Lu Meng had just issued the military order, but the military order had not yet been fully conveyed.
Wei Yan's move to rush directly towards Lü Meng also caused a bit of confusion among Lü Meng's soldiers, who were anxious to get closer to Lü Meng to protect Lü Meng.
As a result, Lü Meng's army suddenly fell into chaos. The front army approached Lü Meng in a chaotic manner, while the rear army didn't know whether to turn to meet the enemy or rescue the general at this time. They were in a mess waiting for Lü Meng's next order.
At this time, Lu Meng was somewhat panicked. He did not expect that the enemy would appear at such a coincidence and advance so quickly. Before Lu Meng could fully coordinate the military orders for the front and rear armies, Wei Yan had already reached a position that was only about thirty steps away from him. Distance.
At this time, Lu Meng was not the Lu Meng who later attacked Jingzhou. And to be honest, even Lu Meng, who had studied military science for several years, did not see this guy showing any strategic vision. What is remarkable is that his ability to command the army is much better than it is now. Just a little stronger.
But now Lu Meng was faced with this unexpected situation and was unable to effectively command for a while. He was attacked from both sides by Wei Yan. Once again, the formation was in chaos. In a short time, Wei Yan killed the formation and had to be defeated. He fled back to Zhou Yu's main formation.
However, Wei Yan was no longer restrained by Lu Meng, so he immediately ordered the other soldiers to return to the camp and hold on. He led two hundred soldiers to charge in from the southeast corner and went straight to the south gate. Cooperating with Kou Feng who came out of the city gate for the second time, the two of them They worked together to kill the guards rushing to the car, and burned the car again.
After that, Wei Yan continued to fight back to the southeast corner camp, and Kou Feng also safely returned to Hubei City.
Only Zhou Yu was itching with hatred.
Originally, Zhou Yu had made a plan and sent out the charging formation again. After the charging formation, he also arranged about a thousand soldiers to support him. Once Kou Feng left the city again, these thousand people would quickly surround Kou Feng, even if they could not kill him. We must also trap him and create opportunities for the car to attack the city gate.
But Zhou Yu never expected that Lu Meng would be killed so easily by Wei Yan, and that Wei Yan still had enough energy to lead everyone all the way into the battlefield from the southeast corner, and combined with the defenders in the city to kill the scattered relief team, and then even Fight back to the southeast corner camp safely again.
Where did the Jingzhou Army find such a fierce general? !
After two attacks on the city, Zhou Yu hadn't remembered Zhang Xi's name yet, but he remembered Wei Yan's name first.
At first Zhou Yu thought that the southeast corner camp of Wei Yan was just an ordinary support force, and he could just send Lu Meng to lead the army to contain it.
Unexpectedly, he was such a ruthless character, and even Lu Meng was no match for him.
In this case, Zhou Yu can't just sit back and ignore it.
(End of chapter)
